High Speed Buffers? HS2 in London (Part 1)

Although not a London specific scheme, High Speed 2 will have an enormous impact on London. In part 1 we take a brief look at the scheme as whole to provide some background information. We briefly describe which topics will eventually be covered. We also cover the first of these – the reasons for the choice of route.

A brief HS2 resumé

High Speed 2, as regular readers must know, is the Government-sponsored scheme for a new London-Midlands-North express railway. It is intended to add capacity and shorten journey times on the main north-south intercity corridors. It has been around as a politically supported concept since 2008-09, although the 2006 Eddington Report dismissed a high speed line as poor value for money and said the government should instead concentrate on improving existing road and rail networks. Recession and post-recession arguments about capacity and stimulus for economic growth turned that policy corner.

Successive governments, Labour in 2009-10, Coalition in 2010-15 and now Conservative, have backed the proposition – one of few matters to secure and maintain all-party support. The government’s designated project company, HS2 Ltd, has developed detailed proposals and undertaken widescale consultation, for a scheme which now embraces about 335 miles consisting of:

Phase 1 trunk line (130 miles) between London, Birmingham and Handsacre, near Lichfield on the West Coast Main Line (WCML)

Recently-defined Phase 2a onwards to Crewe (around 40 miles)

The bulk of Phase 2, Crewe to Manchester and from the West Midlands to the East Midlands and Yorkshire (approximately another 165 miles including through spurs to NW and NE England)

This is a large ambition, and was to have included more elements in earlier versions with a Heathrow spur and an HS2-HS1 link.

The preparatory work led to a HS2 Phase 1 Hybrid Bill being lodged in Parliament in November 2013 to seek powers for construction and operation. There was also a paving Act – the High Speed Rail (Preparation) Act 2013 – to allow early start on preliminary elements. The main Bill has just concluded its Commons stages and has entered the House of Lords. During the Commons a major part of the proceedings was a Select Committee, whose work began in May 2014, and continued into February 2016. Meetings extended over 160 days of hearings with nearly 1,600 petitioners. Appointment to such a Select Committee has sometimes been compared to a Soviet posting to Siberia.

What we are covering

It is high time for those at LR Towers to sharpen our pencils since the scheme comes well into London Reconnections territory. We will identify the issues involved and the controversy surrounding them, so far as the proposals impact on the London area. We aren’t going to enter into the broader case for and against what, if authorised, will be new national intercity high speed tracks through the countryside and some city regions. We shall however look at various elements of the scheme, notably:

Purposes of HS2

Selected route in the London area

Demand and capacity case as it affects the London commuting area

Particulars at Old Oak and at Euston

Different options proposed by other parties

What have been the main petitioning points raised in Commons Select Committee

Purposes of HS2 – National economic growth objectives

Not to be forgotten, though it can easily be in the large cost envelope of the whole project (£42.6bn for Phases 1 and 2, plus £7.5bn for trains, at 2nd Quarter 2011 prices) [the 2015 Spending Review has now inflated numbers pro-rata], is that HS2 is fundamentally intended to be an instrument on a national scale for place-shaping and economic growth. It has the potential for large-scale economic impacts in the Midlands and the north as well as London. No-one can pin down the actual outcomes with accuracy, but there is a belief in a trajectory. A summary position can be described as significant capacity released on existing lines, in turn enabling that economic expansion, and while we are at it, let’s make the journey times shorter with other connectivity and economic gains. The original LGV (Ligne de Grande Vitesse) between Paris and Lyon had similar origins. The phrase ‘High Speed’ can, unfortunately, imply a different underlying policy priority.

Belief or non-belief in an economic trajectory generates considerable light and heat between project promoters and doubters. As shown in the article The Queen vs DfT, the Department for Transport rules out use of wider economic gains (Gross Value Added or similar) for transport business case development, even though GVA is widely endorsed by local authorities including the GLA and TfL, and by the new National Infrastructure Commission. So HS2 has an inbuilt hindrance – or paradox – of a scheme intended to achieve place-shaping, but where those changes can only be modelled indirectly through the nominal economic impacts of changes in journey time and related parallel transport side-effects, these being considered a proxy for the real changes in the economy. It’s all rather perverse!

The topic has been underscored by the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ Chair of Transport for the North Partnership, ex-CBI leader John Cridland, who stated (on 22nd February, the same day as the HS2 Select Committee’s 2nd Report) that ambitious infrastructure should be on the agenda regardless of any business case shortfall:

I’m not claiming there is perfect science here… But I am convinced that after decades of under-investment, it’s now time to close that investment gap – and it will lead to better travelling experiences and economic growth… Transport economics can’t always prove this: sometimes, like the Victorian engineers, you have to take a leap of faith.

It is not clear how the billions of pounds of expenditure on a Northern leap of faith would go down well anywhere else in the UK, except as a ‘me too’ pork-barrel argument where economic assessments and value for money were temporarily suspended as a methodology throughout Britain. To take valuation matters a little further, the Government argues that in the case of any HS3, or conflation of HS3 and Trans-Pennine upgrade and electrification, economic impacts of what will be a combination of capacity and ‘isochrone geography’ will be beneficial two-way across Northern England – with the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ effect advantaging the cities east and west of the Pennines.

Logically, any equivalent effects will also arise two-way with HS2, although that isn’t talked about too much, and more political emphasis is given to benefits in the Midlands and the north. But surely the ‘London Powerhouse’ gains too, and with its strong centre of economic gravity you can work out some of the possible implications?

Purposes of HS2 – strategic changes to rail capacity in London and the Home Counties

There is a symmetry about the HS2 Phase 2 Yorkshire branch that matches with Phase 1. They are both about removing the fastest intercity services from the existing lines from London that serve the north of England – the West Coast, Midland and East Coast – until they reach the Midlands and the southern part of northern England. There, through trains would rejoin the classic network, while ‘captive’ services linking the main conurbation capitals (London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds) would serve new termini built specially for those trains.

Rerouteing the intercity services basically provides additional commuting capacity for the Home Counties and shires to/from London on the existing lines. Outer suburban and longer-distance ‘intershire’ commuting is where a big change in demand is already arising, and is forecast to grow much more in the period to 2043, according to Network Rail’s long term planning forecasts and more recent documentation. The commuting aspects are discussed later in more detail. There is also at least a 50% growth in freight train movements expected on the West Coast Main Line (WCML) – largely inter-modal freight – and growth in regional passenger travel in the Midlands and northern England.

Whether HS2 is the best way of tackling London’s future needs on these lines, plus new economic growth, will not be discussed. Others have argued for maximum capacity increases to the existing WCML and its train fleets, the Great Central main line to be reopened somehow for freight if not for passengers, 4-tracking Welwyn Viaduct for the East Coast Main Line (ECML), and other interventions. The simple fact is that it is the longer distance intercity flows which are planned to be rerouted via HS2, so with two hits opening up more train slots on three existing main lines. The DfT has published technical reports in November 2015 which argue that further WCML upgrades would be wholly inadequate for that corridor’s foreseen future demand.

There is much general acceptance that trying to expand the existing WCML into a 6-track railway from its present 4 (and 8 tracks rather than 6 south of Watford) would be a very difficult task, bringing with it all the risks that were the downfall of the West Coast Route Modernisation’s financial and project management in the late 1990s and 2000s, and contributed to the death of Railtrack. A £2bn scheme became £9bn, which is about half of the works cost for HS2 Phase 1, while the collateral service impacts during years of reconstruction became part of standard railway folklore.

The essence of the scheme is that HS2 Phase 1 provides WCML tracks 5 and 6, and is intended to open in December 2026. Any early extension to Crewe, perhaps in 2027, would virtually complete the HS2 impact on the WCML – irrespective of any later authorisation of links towards Manchester and/or Liverpool. HS2 forecasting should take into account this non-linear impact on demand and capacity requirements from what at first sight appears to be a ‘modest’ Phase 2a. The construction timescales foreseen in March 2014 in Sir David Higgins’ HS2 Plus report, for HS2 Phase 1 including the London area, are set out below.

HS2 route in the Home Counties

Before the HS2 Phase 1 Bill was submitted to Parliament in November 2013, there was wide ranging optioneering about the preferred route to approach the London urban area. Whichever way you pointed, you were going to meet the Chilterns, which in practice extend in an arc all the way from south of the Goring Gap (Great Western Main Line) to east of the Luton Gap (Midland Main Line). This was bound to incur strong objections, and was likely to involve a commitment to tunnelling on some scale.

The route finally selected sought to take advantage of the underused and relatively straight railway corridor within NW London, the former Great Western & Great Central (GW&GC) Joint Line – also known as the New North Main Line (NNML) – which opened in the 1900s as – appropriately enough – the Edwardian high speed railway between London and the west and east Midlands. The first part of this line was opened in the London area in 1904. The last section, from Ashendon in Buckinghamshire to Aynho near Banbury, opened in 1910.

HS2 route and other main line rail corridors in West and NW London

The GW&GC corridor informed the eventual choice of the HS route through the Chilterns, which follows much of the Misbourne Valley, shunned on the Denham-Amersham section by previous generations of railway builders. Amersham itself was only reached by the 1892 Metropolitan Railway extension from Chalfont to Aylesbury, which in reality was another railway encouraged by its forceful Chairman into paying for part of the 1890s Great Central extension to London. He also chaired the Great Central, South Eastern, Channel Tunnel and Nord Railways, and wanted to create a Manchester-Paris Main Line. The GCR was built to a smallish continental-sized loading gauge. History is now repeating itself.

HS2 shown diverging from the New North Main Line over the Colne Valley

In the Home Counties, therefore, HS2 is planned after its London tunnel to diverge from the GW&GC corridor east of Denham, cross the Colne Valley with a brief glimpse of light, then back into a long tunnel to near Amersham, then with much cut-and-cover ‘green tunnel’ and deep cuttings for environmental protection reasons towards Wendover. In the Vale of Aylesbury and beyond, HS2 would parallel the Met and GC to near Brackley in Northants, physically using the GC alignment north of Calvert, then follow a new route past Daventry to the West Midlands. However, no commuter stations are planned on this section of line, which is a cause of mixed opinions in the commuter territory served. HS2 Ltd is clear why this is, the railway is intended for intercity flows, and line capacity would be lost by trains slowing and accelerating to serve intermediate stops. This view has prevailed so far during the passage of the HS2 Phase 1 Bill.

Choices within London

The GW&GC corridor points within London towards Old Oak Common (OOC), which is where the Great Western Main Line is met. OOC provides the opportunity for a direct interchange with the GW and with Crossrail 1, the latter being important to allow a one-stop interchange for the City and Canary Wharf, which helps to relieve passenger flows at Euston, as well as providing access to Heathrow Airport. Access to Heathrow Airport will be discussed in part 2.

The GC entry to Central London, which is quite curvaceous and graded, leaves the NNML at South Ruislip towards Neasden, and is used fully by Chiltern Line services. The NNML southwards is hardly used these days. OOC was therefore the logical next location along the corridor, along with the original ambition of surface running on the London side of South Ruislip. Several options and complications then arise:

Design criteria for HS2 and effect along the NNML route

Choice of access to Heathrow Airport

Choice of access to a London terminus

Any access within London, other than via a London terminus

HS2 design criteria and effect on NNML route

The HS2 line design specification is for up to 400 km/h (about 250 mph), and for ‘captive’ inter-conurbation trains (London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds) to be a ‘GC’ European loading gauge dimension. A build of ‘classic-compatible’ trains will also be required for intercity trains running onto the existing network. More detailed information from HS2 Ltd is that the trains’ intended maximum speed on a day-to-day basis will be limited to 360 km/h, with the timetable scheduled at 320-330 km/h (about 200 mph), which is now a European HS norm. The 360 km/h upper limit gives a margin to recover from perturbations. A freedom of information response reveals that the main tunnel design on HS2 will be single track bores: 7.55m diameter for line speeds up to 230km/h, and 8.8m diameter for speeds up to 360km/h, and for tunnels over 1 km long the provision of evacuation facilities which includes a safe area. Typically ‘porous portals’ are required for line speeds of 230km/h and above because of the piston effect.

There is a debate to be had about the merits within the UK of large-gauge ‘captive’ trains, which will not be double-deck (too much delay with boarding and alighting at intermediate stops, apparently). A high-density 3+2 seat formation is being considered by HS2 Ltd for the ‘captive’ shuttles to maximise passenger capacity while maintaining some degree of comfort. This because there is a significant HS2 Ltd worry about potential passenger demand vs line capacity. However it might be advisable for HS2 to check out the views of, for example, Portsmouth Line users, about the ambience of their 3+2 Desiro 450 journeys on 50+ minute services, compared to the previous 2+2 seating on Desiro 444s. It would be a bit downbeat to travel at 200 mph in an inner suburban seating environment undesirable even for today’s scale of obesity, even if many of HS2’s passengers were commuters.

Width matters

Any ‘GC’ trains would be only marginally wider than UK-size carriages, four inches at best. The standard 26m-long UIC passenger coach has to be no more than 2,825mm wide. The late Gordon Hafter, London Underground’s rolling stock engineer, noted that “for the imperially minded that is 9ft 3ins, which is (surprise) exactly the overall width over door handles on a BR Mk 1 coach”. He observed that “It is only at the bogies, where there is no throwover, and generally below platform level, where the BR gauge is even narrower, that coaches built to UIC gauge can be noticeably wider, which is why the Trans-Manche Supertrains [the first Eurostar design] have had to have their bogies radically redesigned from those used on the TGV-A trains, although the car-bodies are literally but a few millimetres smaller, at 2,814mm according to the published drawings.”

HS2 Ltd believes that a standard off-the-shelf European train could be cheaper than a product modified for the UK loading gauge, although many such trains would be needed for ‘classic-compatible services’. The proportions foreseen by HS2 Ltd are 16 ‘captive’ and 45 ‘classic compatible’ trains for Phase 1 (61 in total), and 70 ‘captive’ and 95 ‘classic-compatible’ for a full Phase 2 (165 in total, with 104 additional).

Several manufacturers, based on direct discussions, consider that ‘classic compatible’ 360km/h trains can be achieved, though 400 km/h is likely to be a challenging design because of the energy and power demands at that speed, requiring larger equipment – but which is not currently required by HS2. So why would a 360km/h ‘captive’ build make any procurement sense or value for money, least of all with Phase 1 or Phase 2a when the vast majority of trains will need to be ‘classic compatible’?

The greatest impacts of design speed and train sizes are on the railway infrastructure. Under European regulations, whether or not it is an HS line, new non-metro lines must be built to a European loading gauge, subject to derogation in reasonable and proportional cases such as the new chord at Bicester. For example, the reopened Borders Line is GC gauge with some lesser derogations in place (eg UK platform heights and platform gap from the rail), and was generally built to the latest engineering and passenger access standards. Smaller loading gauge trains may use European-gauge lines, subject to addressing matters such as the relationship between the trains and strictly specified ‘GC’ platform clearances and heights. These regulations were complied with on the first generation Eurostar and Regional Eurostar trains (an example of a ‘classic-compatible’ design) though what was achieved was not necessarily a ‘step-free’ solution.

Grandfather rights apply to existing main lines with smaller loading gauges, such as the bulk of the existing UK network. Otherwise there could be the logical nonsense of no through running back onto the ‘classic’ network. There would be little benefit from HS2 Phases 1 and 2a if infrastructure changes for through HS trains became prohibitively expensive and railway standards blocked through services to Manchester, Glasgow etc as long as those cities were excluded from the new HS lines. However, if an existing UK line were to be upgraded significantly, the new Technical Specifications for Interoperability (TSI) requirements might be expected to apply (again subject to derogation).

In the London area, in theory the NNML could be used by HS trains between Ruislip and Old Oak Common, with electrification, upgraded tracks and signalling, providing that only ‘classic-compatible’ trains were used and relevant TSIs adopted if required. The NNML used to be 4-track on part of the line through Ruislip shared with Chiltern. There would be a similar opportunity to share tracks on the approaches to Euston and other conurbation termini.

The adoption of a very high speed specification (faster than intended to be used at present) and European gauge ‘captive’ trains, forces a requirement for new line specification all the way to the buffers at London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. Not cheap, with shades of a Brunellian broad gauge effect including ‘change of gauge’ impacts at major cities and on major corridors that might not see through HS trains even as UK economic and population growth improved the case for more through-running services.

It is acknowledged that many present intercity services are a city-centre to city-centre only offering, but they often call at towns and cities elsewhere en route, eg at major interchanges, whereas HS trains wouldn’t because of the route and service specification. Essentially, HS2 has adopted a Japanese stand-alone style of HS offer, rather than one of the other options such as the French HS radiating services structure or the integrated ‘neubaustrecke’ extra HS lines and junctions joining up with many existing networks and city centre stations, as preferred by Germany and Switzerland. The UK, of course, doesn’t have other European-gauge city centre approaches, except for HS1 to St Pancras International.

The 22nd Century population may yet applaud 400 km/h operability, just as we benefit from Brunel’s 19th Century foresight or wastefulness (take your choice). 21st Century Treasurers and financiers might prefer something less exciting and more affordable, incremental, and nearer in line with what much of Europe has already settled on. That could affect the final HS2 train order – maybe full dimension trains, eventually …? The Dutch had a saying in 1940 – we like you Germans but we don’t want all of you at once.

Adaptation of the NNML was originally proposed on the non-GC section south of South Ruislip to near OOC. However according to HS2 Ltd the net cost of tunnelling all the way wasn’t much different to an adapted and TSI’d NNML rebuilt to ‘GC’ dimensions, while the timescale for tunnel construction was acceptable. It also avoided many local environmental concerns about the noise and other impact of very high speed trains operating along a corridor no longer familiar with having an express railway on their doorstep (albeit the adjoining Central Line is a frequent service). The impact had been a significant petitioning point by the GLA and TfL irrespective of the fact that the debated section of railway now falls within and adjoining the parliamentary constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson MP since May 2015). Other NNML constituencies are Brent Central, Ealing Central & Acton, Ealing North, and Ruislip Northwood & Pinner.

So there is now the paradox of an under-used surface main line railway corridor in a congested London, the GW&GC Joint Line/NNML, which has influenced the location of HS2, yet on present plans will remain under-used with the new high speed railway in tunnel below it all the way to near Old Oak Common. The NNML is potentially also interrupted in some locations while HS2 tunnel ventilation and escape shaft works are undertaken. The involvement with the NNML of the proposed WCML-Crossrail 1 link is discussed later.

In part 2 we shall, amongst other things, look at access to Heathrow and the choice (or lack of choice) of a London terminal.

332 Comments

Taz
29 March 2016 at 03:34

As well as diverting rail travellers from five cities to Euston, HS2 will no doubt attract some travellers who currently fly into London.

Rational Plan
29 March 2016 at 04:46

The argument that they are over providing capacity into other city centres by building new line all the way with new stations, pre-suposes that their is spare platforms and line capacity in the first place.

British stations aren’t the vast complexes of 400m platforms of most continental cities. We spent most of the late 20th century closing down wasteful excess capacity in our regional cities.

I challenge you to find the platform space and paths for 400m trains into Birmingham, Leeds or Manchester, without serious construction works.

Anonymous of Croydon
29 March 2016 at 06:49

I think some tidying up is needed for “is where a big change is demand is already rising”. Otherwise as ever of great interest.

[I have changed the first “is” to “in” but apart from that it seems fine. I have gone back to the original source and checked and at no point was this what was written. He wrote “is where a big change is demand is already arising”. Makes perfect sense to me now. PoP]

Anonymous
29 March 2016 at 07:35

Please also cover the HS2-HS1 link, which as far as I am aware has never been covered on LR despite (would have been) its significant impact.

[I have now made this clear that this will be covered in part 2 – or, if not, in part 3. PoP]

Greg Tingey
29 March 2016 at 08:44

The GCR was built to a smallish continental-sized loading gauge. History is now repeating itself.
Except it isn’t.
NO connection between HS2 & HS1 – [Opinion snipped; proposed HS2-HS1 links will be covered in part 2, please would everyone stay off it until then. Malcolm]

NNML route
It is to be sincerely hoped that most if not all of the OOC-Ruislip existing formation remains/is restored to conventional use after construction. It’s much too valuable a connection to lose, in “normal” operating terms.

Anonymous
29 March 2016 at 08:50

Why is WRAtH not shown on the map?

Malcolm
29 March 2016 at 08:54

The HS2-HS1 link will be covered in part 2.

Tim Burns
29 March 2016 at 08:58

As a flyer living in Edinburgh, shaving 30 to 60 minutes off the train to London means (for me) flying to London becomes unappealing with all the transfers, security and queuing involved. I doubt I will be the only person to do this evaluation.

Of course if you are connecting out of Heathrow, then flying makes sense. And some people will turn their nose up (at least until colleagues have tried it) at the HS2 train. This group forms what’s left of the “Masters of the Universe”, which can be seen boarding the flights to City Airport each day.

So HS2 will take some, but not all, business away from plane.

Excellent article, thanks.

quinlet
29 March 2016 at 09:12

I find it quite surprising that the view that HS2 (and other major bits of transport infrastructure) will generate economic growth still prevails when what research and experience as exists does not support this.

Admittedly the research is surprisingly limited, but as long ago as 1979, when the Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment (ACTRA) considered the thesis, they could not find evidence to support it. A more thorough examination by SACTRA in the 1980s came to a similar conclusion. The best they could argue is that better transport infrastructure encourages concentration or centralisation of economic development, rather than creation of it.

Certainly all the evidence of new road construction to outlying parts of the country on the basis of spreading economic growth shows this to be false, unless there are substantial financial incentives for such development.

So Cridland is probably right that this is an economic tenet of faith rather than evidence based research. If anything, HS2 could well have the opposite effect of that predicted, which is to concentrate more growth in London.

ngh
29 March 2016 at 09:49

Re Anonymous 08:50 ,

WRAtH
1. Becasue it isn’t called WRAtH any more! but Western Rail Link To Heathrow (WRLTH)

2. The final route hasn’t been decided yet but there is now a preferred option which still has some minor options in it that need further work before DCO is sought in about a year (some of which partially relates to HS2 as it involves relocating the Heathrow Express depot from Old Oak Common (OOC) HS2 station site to Langley.

Re JR,

Double Deck or not on captive sets has some fairly significant impacts on both maximum capacity and operating economics so I would be surprised if this is revisited at some stage as there are some proposed services where intermediate stops shouldn’t be an issue as there is platform capacity and on slightly quieter branches north of the Birmingham junctions (Crewe for example) so a small double deck fleet might be feasible or whether they end up upgrading HS2 in the 2040s or later with extra platforms or passing loops at some stations.

Re Tim Burns,

City Airport has been massively expanding it services and passenger numbers so the flight prices can often be much better than expected and certainly more competitive with Heathrow ticket prices when airport charges increase post a 3rd runway /T6 completion.
The huge extra capacity added by HS2 will be very disruptive to pricing models on both existing rail services and air (air mainly with Phase 2) with lots more cheaper seats as the HS2 operator seeks to maximise revenue via load factor so I suspect the prices might be willing to temp potential users to swap fairly readily (a fairly easy way for business to reduce the expenses bill).

Anonymike (Northern Reporter)
29 March 2016 at 10:01

Anonymous @ 08:50
“Why is WRAtH not shown on the map?”
I guess it is an HS2 map, WRAtH is not really pertinent to HS2 – it points the wrong way for anyone using HS2.

In the article:
“No-one can pin down the actual outcomes with accuracy, but there is a belief in a trajectory.”
I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to say here, but then I never really understood economics.

Interesting start to the series, particularly looking forward to reading the part about the effects on the classic lines. Looks like it could be a bit of roller-coaster in the comments though – I take it discussion of the pros and cons of HS2 will be carefully moderated?

Paul III
29 March 2016 at 10:11

With regards to captive train capacity and double decker vs single deck 3+2 seating, Spanish manufacturer Talgo offers high speed trains which use shorter but wider than normal coaches, enabling 3+2 seating with standard intercity seats. They claim such a train has equivalent capacity to a double decker unit without the loading time disadvantage. See http://www.talgo.com/index.php/en/avril.php .

Jonathan Roberts
29 March 2016 at 10:11

@Rational Plan
Agree about requirement for more capacity, it’s how that’s offered which can make a difference. General use capacity, UK-gauge platforms, etc can be useful for many rail service options. GC-gauge trains may limit your options, both for how capacity is used, for options about through running, and (not limited to GC-gauge) for connectivity if new stations were distant from existing rail nodes.
@Anonymous 08:50
The Heathrow discussion (part 2) has a map of its own.

Malcolm
29 March 2016 at 10:15

Yes, the general principal adopted by moderators hitherto will remain; any comment with a geographical focus unrelated to London is not acceptable. We hope that retention of the London focus will be achieved as much as possible by commentors’ own self-restraint, but if this fails, then the scissors will appear.

(A reasonable amount of general discussion of things like seating plans or other non-geographical matters is OK of course).

Fandroid
29 March 2016 at 10:18

3+2 seating sounds awful. On the class 450s, those 3 width seats only fill up when they really have to. I would guess that reservations will be compulsory on HS2 so I hope that the reservation system will allow window and aisle seat to fill first. On the workhorse short-haul jets like the Airbus 320 series, the seating is 3+3 and the airlines fully acknowledge the unpopularity of those middle seats. If the majority of seats on HS2 ‘captive’ trains will be airline style, then I can foresee all the fun and games of loading a plane (people getting up and getting in the way to let others reach their seats, but blocking any movement along the aisle) being replicated on the trains. The boarding process for a passenger jet is remarkably slow. My guess is that 3+2 for a full single-deck train would be slower to load than 2+2 for a full double-deck train with a similar total number of seats.

Fandroid
29 March 2016 at 10:19

Sorry Malcolm. Wield those scissors! [No need, I have modified my advice already. It’s really only things like “why doesn’t it go to Liverpool?” that are totally banned. Malcolm]

Is this still up to date?
On the Newcastle part have TfL taken into account Virgin East Coast’s proposed service changes (improvements) and ETCS on the ECML allowing 140mph running in places which would allow ECML to still be some what competitive or will DfT need to ensure it isn’t competitive (e.g. curtail some services at York or divert elsewhere)? [For those less aware ECML Leeds journey times would always uncompetitive via ECML so there would be a reduction / elimination of ECML Leeds services but York & Newcastle would remain competitive due to more direct route being short enough to offset the HS2 speed differential. The reduction in Leeds services would be the main way to generate commuter capacity on the ECML commuter routes to London]

Malcolm
29 March 2016 at 10:37

Passenger plane loading time is maybe not quite as relevant as one may think, because on a plane everyone must be seated and belted before it can depart; it is different with trains.

ngh
29 March 2016 at 10:49

Re Fandroid,

“The boarding process for a passenger jet is remarkably slow. My guess is that 3+2 for a full single-deck train would be slower to load than 2+2 for a full double-deck train with a similar total number of seats.”

Completely agree especially if the aisle would be so narrow. It shouldn’t be as bad as a single aisle aircraft as if they are worried about intermediate station dwell times the stock would presumably:

a) have doors at either end of each car (some European HS stock has this) and with circa 2/3rd the number of rows of the longest in the B737/A321 families and only 3 seats on 1 side it should be quicker than loading up an aircraft fully.

b) the passengers getting of at intermediate stops aren’t allowed to book window seats but only aisle ones etc. on the busier services

I suspect it is time to commission some mock ups to test the permutations (and modelling) before the rolling stock spec is finalised.

timbeau
29 March 2016 at 11:08

@Paul III
“3+2 seating with standard intercity seats. They claim such a train has equivalent capacity to a double decker unit without the loading time disadvantage.”

I’d be surprised at that – surely what matters is the seat/door ratio, not whether the seats are all on one level? (And after all, a double decker has twice as many gangways)

The illustrations of the Talgo “AVRIL” show that although the carriages are shorter (which results in less throwover on curves and thus a wider bodyshell), in common with other articulated types like Eurostar, each carriage has but a single door.

On a point to point service dwell time is academic. But from a London point of view, the more popular Old Oak Common becomes (and thus the greater the dwell time there), the greater the time penalty for those continuing to, or starting at, Euston. There must come a tipping point at which the OOC-Euston tunnel becomes a white elephant.

There is, of course, Eurostar’s solution to the delays that would be caused by dwell time at their Zone 2 railhead.

tyteen4a03
29 March 2016 at 11:27

@Fandroid: I don’t know how they’re going to make 3+2 work with health and safety regulations (fire exit?) without significantly sacrificing comfort. Just imagine that on a 395…

ngh
29 March 2016 at 11:31

Re Timbeau / Paul / Fandroid

With single deck 3+2 solution there would presumably be massive provision of overhead storage for big luggage which may not be possible on double deck with 2+2 hence an increased number of racks at the ends which might be the issue dwell times? Are they worried about passengers getting confused about whether a seat is up or down stairs when boarding.

Anonymous
29 March 2016 at 11:32

I don’t understand why HS2 has to finish at Euston, why not keep going to either a South London terminus, or to a south coast one, its more like the ‘Northern London Powerhouse’.

[Again, comments like this should be kept for a future part of the this article. PoP]

Malcolm
29 March 2016 at 11:43

Dwell time is not academic whether or not the service is point to point. It affects the number of platforms required (highly critical at Euston), and the number of (expensive) trains required to run a given level of service.

Anonymike (Northern Reporter)
29 March 2016 at 11:45

@ngh

I’m not so sure that the number of services from Leeds / York / Newcastle will reduce as a result of HS2 (and this goes for WCML and MML services too). I can see a reversal of the recent trend to remove useful intermediate stops to ‘speed up’ services, providing an inter-regional service. As the inter-city traffic may have been abstracted by HS2, these services will provide an outer-commuter function, which may free up space on the inners…

Josh
29 March 2016 at 12:07

Are double deck trains definitely not going to happen at any point?

Has anyone in the world tried double deck loading for such trains with a mezzanine level for platforms.

timbeau
29 March 2016 at 12:17

@Anonymike
A number of services from Sheffield/Leeds/York etc to Kings Cross/St Pancras would still be needed for the same reason there are still trains from Waterloo to Exeter – they provide connections from both ends to places in between, such as Leicester and Peterborough. Not that I would relish the thought of an updated equivalent of a 159 all the way to Leicester………..

@Malcolm
“Dwell time is not academic on point to point”
Except on the most high-frequency metro services, I doubt that the rate-determining factor for turnround time at a terminus is the time taken for passengers to alight and board. There are other factors, such as basic cleaning, restocking, safety checks, crew handovers, and recovery time.

Malcolm
29 March 2016 at 12:22

Double deck loading was discussed quite recently in this comment and subsequent comments. Plenty of difficulties. Please do not repeat here what was said there.

ngh
29 March 2016 at 12:25

Re Josh,

“Has anyone in the world tried double deck loading for such trains with a mezzanine level for platforms.”

Yes – TGV Duplex being the closest example to the UK (and the similar loading gauge as HS2)

Malcolm
29 March 2016 at 12:30

@timbeau: the London to Birmingham service (in particular) may be rather more like a high-frequency metro service than one might think. Some of the tasks you mention can admittedly be done in parallel with alighting and boarding, but some (e.g. cleaning) cannot. Recovery time may also be less important for a uniform shuttle-like service.

[I don’t want to prolong it either, but I have just realised that Josh’s original comment could be read in two ways. Arguably, “normal” platform levels are “mezzanine” relative to the two different seating levels in trains like TGV Duplex, though I think Josh was referring to simultaneous loading from two levels of platform, which is how most subsequent comments read it. Malcolm]

ngh
29 March 2016 at 13:24

Re Timbeau,

“I don’t want to prolong the double deck discussion, but will just point out that TGV Duplex only has entrances at the lower level.”

And I will just point out that the lower deck is actually 2 steps below the mezzanine level where the doors are! Notice how the window in the door is substantially above the lower deck windows in the photo you posted…

Double deck only works if the lower floor level is substantially below the lower 760mm UIC platform height (UK platforms tend to be around 915mm or higher with Harrington Humps for level access).

The single deck 3+2 issue may be more to do with level access and not having mixed units with some single deck carriages for wheel chair spaces and bar / shop.

Malcolm
29 March 2016 at 13:29

Yes, the introduction of the word “mezzanine” has inadvertently caused much confusion. Let’s move on…

Jonathan Roberts
29 March 2016 at 14:25

@ngh
HS2 Ltd is thinking of 1150mm height for its own dedicated platforms – this implies same-level entry-exit along with ‘GC’ train widths. It has recently sought derogation from the European authorities for this. A similar height is adopted by Heathrow Express – but of course with UK-platform edge widths allowed, relative to the train body width. To have a potential range of 1200mm to 760mm, plus ‘GC’ train body widths, introduces a number of potential complications for through train operation, step heights up/down, and gaps between different-type trains and platforms – not least to/from HS1 and any (eventual) continental services, let alone conventional trains limited to the UK. Bear in mind that HS1 had to build (expensively) separate ‘European’ and UK-gauge platforms and tracks at Stratford International and Ebbsfleet.

Malcolm
29 March 2016 at 14:30

… and I think the platforms at Stratford Int were (temporarily?) (expensively?) modified to allow use by javelins during the Olympics.

Malcolm
29 March 2016 at 14:39

The separate platforms at Ebbsfleet etc were anyway necessary for passenger-segregation reasons, so it may not have cost any more to build them at one height rather than another. (The issue of whether international passengers really have to be segregated is not open for discussion at this time!)

Patrickov
29 March 2016 at 14:45

I more or less concern the line capacity issue at the southern end. Given the schematic map shown, probably all trains are going to London, which is probably going to put a big burden on the southern part of the route. I agree that tunneling under NNML is a good idea if this is what will be built.

ngh
29 March 2016 at 15:34

Re JR,

An outbreak of common sense if that is approved!
Level boarding on all NR platforms at circa 1150mm nationwide would be very welcome!
Double deck with 1150mm platform height would need 4 steps down to the lower deck which would use a bit more length and slow down the passenger flow a bit further so single deck is all now making more sense.

Mr Beckton
29 March 2016 at 15:58

HS2 is determined not to have any suburbs/M25 station, and thereby cut themselves off from a substantial part of suburban and Home Counties traffic to Manchester etc – just the sort that currently uses air from Heathrow.

This is a repeat of what Virgin did by eliminating Watford Junction stops, which likewise got rid of some significant high-revenue business travellers to the airlines. It is a myth that Euston is somehow a convenient place to depart from; TfL are progressively making car usage and parking in Central London untenable, unlike Heathrow, and for making a trip to Manchester the plane is a worthwhile option from outer London and the Home Counties. It was notable that when Eurostar moved from Waterloo (convenient for SW London services) to St Pancras (not so), air traffic from Heathrow to Paris suddenly went up significantly. This is the area where many such travellers live.

DPWH
29 March 2016 at 16:00

With 4 tracks north of Birmingham, one “west coast branch” to Crewe, Manchester, eventually Carlisle and Glasgow, and one “East coast branch” to Toton, Sheffield, Leeds and eventually Newcastle and Edinburgh, this does appear to leave (1) a certain lack of capacity at the southern end, especially if you want to run a clockface timetable and divert trains off the main route to serve places e.g. Liverpool and (2) lack of resilience.

The (crayonista) solution would appear to be a second N-S high speed line from King’s Cross/St Pancras area (possibly elevated), via Luton Airport and Leicester (for all the London-based ex-ManU glory supporters switching their allegiances), to Toton. And this could be more of a priority than getting to Scotland. This of course means more fun and games at King’s Cross…

Jon B
29 March 2016 at 16:04

@Malcolm

My recollection is the platforms at Stratford International were modified using the equivalent of hardboard and four by two, with a bit of non slip material on the top. Not sure whether that was expensive or not?!

Malcolm
29 March 2016 at 16:15

Mr Beckton says “It is a myth that Euston is somehow a convenient place to depart from”.

Nobody considers that there is any one generally “convenient place to depart from” in the London area. Car parking and usage in Central London is generally untenable (not the fault of TfL). Any outer suburban station on a long-distance line is convenient for the relatively small number of people who happen to live near it, and just a waste of time for everyone else.

Yes, of course (some) residents of, say, Basingstoke, went back to flying when Eurostar moved, but they would probably be mostly replaced by residents of (say) Stevenage.

Southern Heights (Light Railway)
29 March 2016 at 16:20

@Malcolm: One can even argue (quite successfully, I think), that car use, makes car use (and therefore car parking) untenable!

Alex
29 March 2016 at 16:25

Am I alone in being disappointed that we continue to specify and build new two track railways, rather than four track? The benefit of being able to run a continuous service through some planned maintenance works and unplanned incidents seems a missed opportunity.

Patrickov
29 March 2016 at 16:40

@Mr Beckton:
Surely the United Kingdom is not small, but if too many suburban stations are added, the railway is not going to be very high speed anyway. Cost of building stations may also be an issue.

Just to say, where are you going to place the first station out of London? I guess it’s a parkway station somewhere outside Ruislip, but it seems not well connected to other railways (apart from NNML), and those on WCML probably find it faster to travel further north.

As far as I see, Asian HSR often have more frequent stops or even only stopping suburbs. But that’s because they were previously not as well developed as the likes of United Kingdom.

@Alex:
Chinese and Japanese HSR are often only double track. That doesn’t make them less efficient.

Malcolm
29 March 2016 at 16:57

I have read that building HS2 (or at least part of it) as four-track was considered and costed. Rather surprisingly, the cost was almost doubled (which you would not expect because certain parts, like the areas beside the tracks, would be unchanged, but apparently these “certain parts” did not amount to a big fraction of the total [*] ). And almost-doubling the cost would take it well beyond the levels where all-party support or general-population support (both of which HS2 has, sort of) could be plausibly expected.

[*] the fact that much of the most-congested part of the line, south of Birmingham, is in tunnel, would be a factor in the almost-doubling.

Dave from Ruislip
29 March 2016 at 17:19

In the original HS2 proposal circa 2010, the NNML route was identified, with much emphasis, as a virtually arrow straight unused surface route (via Old Oak Common) to Euston. I understand the decisions to tunnel but does anyone know if subsequent to this decision, alternative tunneled alignments to Euston were evaluated?

ngh
29 March 2016 at 17:45

Re DPWH

4 tracks into 2…

but the Northern branches will also have services (circa 25% overall) that terminate at Birmingham (city centre) rather than just Euston so not as big a capacity mismatch as might be expected. Don’t forget the Birmingham – Newcastle (or Leeds etc.) journey time reduction is one of the biggest overall.

Malcolm
29 March 2016 at 18:11

ngh: Good point. (Though I suspect the passenger numbers going south to Bham will be quite a bit less than 25%, so those trains might be on the emptyish side).

Malcolm
29 March 2016 at 18:14

Dave from Ruislip: Alternative tunnel approaches should probably have been at least briefly considered. Although there is a certain pressure not to go back to first principles too many times in such a design process, for fear of getting analysis paralysis.

Anonymike (Northern Reporter)
29 March 2016 at 18:34

And tunnelling under existing railway right of way is a lot less controversial than tunnelling under people’s back yards…

ngh
29 March 2016 at 18:40

Re Malcolm,

They also provide a better intermediate stopping service than most Euston services so could do quite well given the popularity of existing Cross-Country franchise services.

Graham H
29 March 2016 at 20:35

One issue that is carefully glossed over resulting from the use of captive trains is that much of the released capacity on the classic lines is then used up restoring the existing connectivities that would otherwise be lost because the captive trains can serve only the captive stations – connexions to MK, for example. The net result of having to put back these lost links is that there is a gain of just two paths/hr on the classic lines. Of course, there is the gain of dedicated Brum and Manchester only paths but for the rest of the system, not much. In particular, the commuter traffic to London will benefit little, as will all those places lining up for a new through service to the capital.

Nor, pace Malcolm, is it clear – at least to me – that the HS captive paths will attract much commuting. The problem is that of access to Curzon Street – the 10 minute (plus) walk from New Street will discourage all but the most hardy to arrive at New St with a view to changing to the high speed route, and the range of properties for commuters (or indeed any folk) within walking distance of Curzon St is small – that leaves arriving by car (tricky…) or bus (ho hum!) or bicycle (Brum not the most user-friendly of cities for bicycles). Manchester is easier to access, but journey times are long even by high speed service for a daily commute, and again the range of properties within easy access to Piccadilly is limited. Maybe Salford and S Manchester will become the next Islingtons but somehow….

Malcolm
29 March 2016 at 20:47

The gain on all the classic lines to/from London (added together) must logically be over 18 trains per hour (over if the HS2 trains are mostly long ones). (That is relative to a situation on the same date if HS2 had not been built, not relative to the situation today). The possibility that most of those slots are either on a different line, or already pencilled in for what Graham describes as “putting back the lost links”, and as a result there may indeed be only two extra uncommitted paths per hour through Watford Junction, is really neither here nor there.

stevekeiretsu
29 March 2016 at 21:00

It baffles me somewhat that you feel obliged to explain acronyms like WCML, which anyone reading about uk trains would surely know – but throw in “TSI” without explanation. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Technical Specifications for Interoperability, to save anybody else googling.

[Steve, it is our policy to spell out all but the most basic acronyms so that even a non-railway reader will understand the terms and not be put off by jargon. By and large we follow the TfL Style Guide in this and other respects. Thank you for pointing out the TSI explanation. LBM] [And as moderators and editors we beg readers’ indulgence for any inconsistencies in our implementation of this policy, such as the one you mention. (This particular one was an editing error, not the author’s fault, as it happens). No-one’s perfect. Malcolm]

Graham H
29 March 2016 at 21:51

@Malcolm – no, it’s certainly relevant – the future gains are the 18 paths/hr on HS2 and 2 paths released on the classic lines (that’s 2 of the present paths). In effect, there’s little change to the present WC services. The capacity provided by the HS2 paths cannot be used except for tied services/tied traffic, so it’s little help to the classic traffic. It would be different, of course, if the HS2 capacity could be used to relieve the classic lines, but it mostly doesn’t.. It’s the consequence of having tied trains.

Jonathan Roberts
29 March 2016 at 23:27

@stevekeiretsu
29 March 2016 at 21:00
Steve, as the author I wrote the explanation of TSI in a footnote in the original draft! It’s the editorial team who deleted that…!!

Richard Gadsden
29 March 2016 at 23:39

Just to briefly point out that while trains from the “North” (Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh) to Birmingham may not carry a particularly large fraction of the passengers, they will probably be 200m trains rather than the 400m trains on the main routes to London, so they will not be as spectacularly empty as might be expected from a first glance.

In respect of a second route to London (from Toton), this is actually mentioned in one of the HS2 documents which comments that four-tracking from Birmingham to London would be nearly as costly as a separate route, would overload both Euston and Old Oak, resulting in the need for much bigger stations to have enough platforms (adding hugely to the cost and to the demolitions required) and would create dispersal problems. A second more easterly route would be built based on known (rather than predicted) demand, would be easier to connect to HS1, and would run to an alternative location in Z1 (ie not Euston) which could then be addressed separately for dispersal. With the King’s Cross redevelopment now complete, the only suggested site left from the optioneering would be one of the wholly underground options.

Anonymike (Northern Reporter)
30 March 2016 at 00:08

@ Mr Beckton
HS2 have said they don’t want a suburban station, and I would have to agree that it is not a good idea. Other people have pointed out the paucity of demand that such a station could provide from its immediate catchment. Far better to have a network of transport options to feed people in from a wide area (and the more interchanges with other networks, the better).
The problem with relying on Euston is that it isn’t very accessible from most of the South-east (try anywhere south of the river more than a mile from an underground station). And asking people to travel there is only ever going to add to the demand for Zone 1 travel – and most articles on here show that this demand would be most unwelcome. Instead, why not have an orbital railway, with frequent services, which interchanges with all the main radial lines, that meets HS2 at a suitable point (preferably a large area of railway land, that such an orbital line already meets, but they can’t be very Common…). Delivering this orbital rail service is definitely within the Purview of TfL – I look forward to the article(s) on the changes needed within London…

Anonymous Soothsayer
30 March 2016 at 00:46

“The 22nd Century population may yet applaud 400 km/h operability”

That seems a little harsh to me, if we look back a “mere” 40 years, the Shinkansen was running at 130mph and the shiny new HST was otherwise a world beater at 125mph. Japan had the foresight in 1964 to build the Tokaido line so it was suitable for the faster speeds that trains run to today. If they hadn’t it would seem a bit short-sighted no?

Any infrastructure project of this size has to support its long-term investment aims by planning for the second half of the 21st century – in the last 40 years regular speeds on the fastest lines have increased by over 60% – an increase to 400km/h over the next 40 years is a more conservative number than that, particularly if we view that the general pace of technological progress is not constant but increasing.

Given that, my view is that 400km/h will be applauded in 2050, and will actually seem woefully inadequate by the 22nd century, notwithstanding environmental catastrophe or nuclear annihilation, and the new business case might be to replace the steel rails with maglev or something faster not invented yet.

Anonymous
30 March 2016 at 00:57

I support HS2 but the terminus at Euston is a disaster, what a waste. Through service to somewhere like Gatwick is the sensible answer.

[And hopefully this will be the last comment talking about Euston before part 2 comes out. PoP]

Walthamstow Writer
30 March 2016 at 01:15

As ever an interesting article with some aspects I was unaware of. I would normally be “excited” by the prospect of something like HS2 being built but I remain rather disinterested about the notion of HS2. I get the feeling it is creating more problems than it is solving (only referring to transport here) but we seldom hear any rational, open discussion as to what the end state of railway services will be if all of HS2 is realised. I find it a tad disconcerting that so many comments above are already referring to “congested” infrastructure on the south end of HS2 when we haven’t put a spade in the ground yet. Given the massive cost of tunnelling there is also negligible scope to ever significantly expand capacity if services do fill up (or are forced to fill up by removal of other options).

I confess I haven’t really got my head round all the gauging / platform height issues mentioned but are we really going to have horrendous dwell time issues with these trains? I assume they will be reservation only and I also assume people will be marshalled and directed to appropriate waiting / queuing points to effect low dwell times. I also wouldn’t be shocked to see things like bicycles being banned (no “guards van”) and restrictions on luggage volumes to stop people humping 27 cases on and off trains. I expect the trains will have to be worked very intensively to get any sort of payback from such expensive assets which means passengers will have to adapt to new ways of doing things (much as they have done with budget airlines but there they gained from having low fares). I can see a certain “Japanese” influence in the design that HS2 appear to be adopting for trains and the route. Isn’t it the case that HS2 have hired in consultancy help from Japan Railways? Ironic given the British influenced so much of Japan’s early railways. I can easily foresee people being marshalled in neat lines at platform edge gates in the new HS2 stations and staff with white gloves checking the seconds ticking by on their watches before the doors swish closed. Whether we will get the “Tokyo wave” of the staff ushering the trains in and out of platforms remains to be seen. 😉

Ian J
30 March 2016 at 01:59

@Greg T: The GCR was built to a smallish continental-sized loading gauge. History is now repeating itself.
Except it isn’t.
NO connection between HS2 & HS1

Staying off the topic of the desirability of such a connection and strictly to the historical parallel identified in the article, I think it still stands – so far as I know there was no continental-gauge connection between the Great Central and the Channel Tunnel in Watkins’ allegedly visionary but rather poorly thought through empire-building plans. Although the idea of TGVs trundling through Euston Square tube station is rather entrancing.

@quilet: the view that HS2 (and other major bits of transport infrastructure) will generate economic growth still prevails when what research and experience as exists does not support this.

Since the 1970s and 1980s studies you mention, there has been much discussion of transport investment’s effects of productivity through such factors as “agglomeration effects”: see the Eddington Report for example. There is no consensus among academics, of course (remember Margaret Thatcher’s desire for a one-handed economist), because while there is a clear correlation between higher levels of transport investment and higher productivity (compare Germany and the UK, or Canada and the USA), it is probably impossible to prove causation.

@ngh: Level boarding on all NR platforms at circa 1150mm nationwide would be very welcome!

Indeed, genuinely level boarding (ie so that a person in a wheelchair/pushing wheeled luggage/a buggy can board at any door without any kind of ramp or assistance) should be a long-term aim for any new rail system.

@MrBeckton: It was notable that when Eurostar moved from Waterloo (convenient for SW London services) to St Pancras (not so), air traffic from Heathrow to Paris suddenly went up significantly

While this was widely predicted at the time by people like Alan Williams who lived in SWT-land, is there any actual evidence that this happened? Eurostar traffic has increased substantially since the change of terminals in 2007.

@Graham H: connexions to MK, for example… the commuter traffic to London will benefit little

But aren’t the connections to Milton Keynes mainly commuter traffic? And aren’t the trains to Milton Keynes less full because they no longer have Birmingham and Manchester passengers on them (ie, you are looking at capacity in terms of numbers of paths not numbers of passengers – or even the number of trains per hour at any given station – for example, many intercity trains per hour through Watford Junction aren’t much use to the passengers there at the moment because they don’t stop).

the 10 minute (plus) walk from New Street will discourage all but the most hardy to arrive at New St with a view to changing to the high speed route, and the range of properties for commuters (or indeed any folk) within walking distance of Curzon St is small – that leaves arriving by car (tricky…) or bus (ho hum!) or bicycle (Brum not the most user-friendly of cities for bicycles).

Like it or not buses are the major form of public transport in Birmingham, and Curzon Street will also have a tram stop. Or commuters can catch a train to Moor Street, which will be on the new station’s doorstep. Or even drive to Birmingham Parkway or whatever it will be called. To bring it back to the London topic, I wouldn’t underestimate the willingness of commuters to walk if it is the quickest way to get where they are going – just look at the hordes crossing London Bridge every morning.

Ian J
30 March 2016 at 02:11

@WW: Isn’t it the case that HS2 have hired in consultancy help from Japan Railways?

Yes, and “station management” is one of the things they are advising on. Tokyo waves might be a step to far for British customer service culture though… 🙂

Will888
30 March 2016 at 05:07

Re: Euston’s inaccessibility to counties south-west of London and continued demand for Heathrow-North point to point flights. Crossrail 2 will go some way to solving this. I’d have thought extending the Crossrail 1 Heathrow branch to interchanges such as Staines and Woking would do much of the rest

Jonathan Roberts
30 March 2016 at 08:13

@ Anonymous Soothsayer
30 March 2016 at 00:46
The New Tokaido Line was designed pre WW2 as the new Tokyo-Korea express line within the Japanese empire, and much of the land for its route was acquired then. So over 80 years’ worth of history, not 50! The 22nd Century is only 85 years away.

Graham H
30 March 2016 at 08:43

@Ian J – it’s the connexions from MK – for example – all along WC (eg to Brum) which get severed if the classic service doesn’t maintain the present service pattern. Yes, there will be fewer Brummies on the MK trains (but see the next para for whether lots of existing Brummie commuters will transfer to the HS service if they are faced with a walk between NST and Curzon St – that will have added a good 15 minutes including access times to the HS journey) but we are talking about paths here.

No, the London Bridge example misses my point; of course,I wasn’t saying that commuters don’t include walk as an end-mode -I cannot think of any significant examples of journeys where commuters catch a train for 10-20 minutes, then walk for 10 along a street, then catch another one for 40 minutes (and then catch yet another train for 10 mniutes and walk a bit more as well). Of course, we all use walk as a mode for initial/ final distribution of a train journey – from Waterloo to Victoria Street, for example. The strategic point however is that the prospect of relying on congested modes such as buses or trying to find somewhere to park near to Curzon Street will make it unappealing to Brummie commuters and not many will choose the “walking sandwich” option.

On the point about the relationship between transport investment and economic growth, the basic problem is – and, as you say, has been for many years – whether the investment stimulates new economic activity or merely moves it from place A to place B. None of the examples cited by the pro and anti camps in the debate is convincing – the analogy of Germany is, for example, not a good guide because the structure of German economic activity is so different to the UK. So far,no one has teased out generic -non-location-specific factors which can be reliably transferred from case to case.

100andthirty
30 March 2016 at 09:19

As a resident of MK, the comments about busy trains emptying on arrival from London in and filling on arrival from the north in the shoulders of the peak is correct but not the whole story. By the way there are NO peak Virgin stoppers, legacy of the Very High Frequency timetable which, probably, uniquely, resulted in MK having a less frequent service of fast train in the peak than in the off peak.

In the last 10 year or so, MK has developed as both a siginificant destination in its own right (especially with the NR offices) and as an interchange point for people wanting to change from local to fast services. There is significant inbound traffic in the mornings and outbound in the evenings, for example. For London traffic, the service pattern is distinctly odd….with all the off peak NB fast trains (6 per hour) concentrated into the xx:10 to xx:20 and xx:43 to xx:49. Southbound, the service is slightly more spread out, but there is still a 26 minute gap between xx:15 and xx:41.

The purpose of this detailed description, is to point out that HS 2 provides an ideal opportunity to work out how to provide better services on the current WCML, for all the current intermediate stations whose service was ‘manipulated’ to deliver headline speed and frequency claims for the longer distance destinations following the WC route modernisation

Greg Tingey
30 March 2016 at 09:23

Graham H
Curzon Street – are they not virtually guaranteeing that trams will be at CZ in time for HS2 opening? Which solves your inner-city access problem, maybe?

WW
What do the French & Germans do with their HS trains?
I know some are reservation-only, but you can book down to a very few minutes before departure ….

Graham H
30 March 2016 at 09:42

@100andthirty – rest assured, the NR WCML development team are already on the case! It’s their analysis that shows that, whilst you can optimise the timetable to deal with the sort of curiosity you mention – Rugby’s strange calling pattern is another – you cannot generate more than a couple of spare paths (maybe only one) if you want to enable people to have the same number of tph to the same major destinations as now. HS2 are reportedly panicking after being told this…

100andthirty
30 March 2016 at 10:28

Graham H

I wasn’t thinking of lots more paths. WCML, as a mixed traffic railway, will always struggle to provide the number of paths achievable on the lines where all the trains are the same with the same stopping patterns. However, if Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and so on customers are largely diverted onto HS2, and someone does something sensible with train length (full and standing on a midday train south from MK…..only 4 cars?). There should be plenty of capacity unless there is so much suppressed demand that trains are overwhelmed (c2c December 2015 timetable!).

Can anyone really see the Holyhead services not being cut back to Crewe – Holyhead (and thus eliminating Diesel diesel train operation into Euston?)

So 100% stopping at Crewe, MK Central, Rugby and more stops at Watford Junction and Rugby (All Birmingham services min.?)

Rational Plan
30 March 2016 at 11:20

To create the intercity mainlines of today, many small towns lost their stations or over the years have lost a lot of services to make way for all the express services.

The removal of the express services will not only allow more services to smaller towns on those routes it will also reduce the number of skip stop services and improve connectivity between those towns.

Maybe Newark to Grantham will get more than the current hourly train for example.

100andthirty
30 March 2016 at 11:37

ngh. At risk of being snipped, I can see Holyhead being an ideal candidate for a bi-mode train. I can’t see that through trains would be given up without a big fight. I would hope to see the end of what feels like the stopping service to Edinburgh/Glasgow via Birmingham often comprised of a 10 car Voyager (or worse, a 5 car).

Fandroid
30 March 2016 at 11:39

As 100andthirty has alluded to, mere tph is a a very crude measure for usefulness to passengers if that tph is not spread appropriately throughout the hour. Converting a bunched up 4tph which has a 30 min gap between some trains to a regular 15min interval service is a way that big benefits can be gained from diversion of big city shuttles to HS2.

[A perfectly reasonable comment by Fandroid but let’s not re-open a big discussion about erratic, frequent but not regular services. PoP]

stevekeiretsu
30 March 2016 at 11:53

@LBM, Malcolm, JR – apologies if that comment sounded unduly critical! It was really just my rhetorical way of saying “hey, you missed one!” 🙂

It was a perfectly reasonable thing to point out and we are grateful for you doing so. It has created a few internal emails. I had not really appreciated how important the original footnote was and it couldn’t just be omitted.

The basic problem is that online publishing is not always very friendly to text written for the printed page and, in particular, our style does not always match the style in which something was written. Of course the reverse is also true and we are still slightly struggling with transferring things written for an online audience to the magazine (where links are not possible).

The problem is with us and I think we need to be more accommodating to enable online articles to be suitable even if written in a print format style or indeed a more academic-style referenced document. I probably did not do the best job of editing (not helped by the fact that inadvertently I pressed the “publish” button whilst doing so!).

Bel Eben
30 March 2016 at 12:53

There is much general acceptance that trying to expand the existing WCML into a 6-track railway from its present 4 (and 8 tracks rather than 6 south of Watford) would be a very difficult task, bringing with it all the risks that were the downfall of the West Coast Route Modernisation’s financial and project management in the late 1990s and 2000s, and contributed to the death of Railtrack.

The only part of the WCML ever seeing “15/16 trains per hour” is the 37-odd miles of fast line between Euston and Ledburn (i.e., 9% of the distance to Glasgow). Trying to expand the existing WCML into a 6-track railway probably wouldn’t make much sense, because of the insufficiency of the demand needed to justify the investment, and the availability of much more cost-effective technical solutions.

A £2bn scheme became £9bn, which is about half of the works cost for HS2 Phase 1, while the collateral service impacts during years of reconstruction became part of standard railway folklore.

The majority of the expenditure on the West Coast Route Modernisation was for renewals. How many collateral service impacts were caused by the enhancements component, is unknown, hence the ‘folklore’.

Purposes of HS2 – Strategic changes to rail capacity in London and the Home Counties

What isn’t at all clear, is what the “Strategic changes to rail capacity” are.

For example, the claimed uplift in WCML railfreight capacity has a minuscule gross economic value. And the net economic value of more goods trains might well be negative, because of the resulting capacity downlift on the Overground.

Philip
30 March 2016 at 13:08

Greg re European high-speed trains:

TGV, (and non-TGV French long-distance trains) are compulsory-reservation but you can buy a ticket and reservation right up to the last minute if seats are available.

German ICEs are similar to the British tradition with reservations available but not compulsory, and standing tolerated in the case of extreme demand.

njak_100
30 March 2016 at 13:37

Just a small point on Eddington: while his 2006 report gave the impression that he had dismissed the notion of a Grand Projet, his oral evidence to the Transport Select Committee made it rather clearer that he was dismissing largely-unproven options such as maglev. He seemed rather more open to steel wheel high speed rail operating in proven markets, like London – Birmingham – Manchester. Needless to say, the problems of connectivity associated with WCRM/Virgin High Frequency were not anticipated at that time. See discussion here: http://bit.ly/1ROAJ9y

timbeau
30 March 2016 at 13:41

Isn’t the Holyhead service, like the A55, sponsored in some way by the EU, as it connects Ireland to the rest of the Union? Its future may thus depend on the result of he referendum.

@Graham H “…..cannot think of any significant examples of journeys where commuters catch a train for 10-20 minutes, then walk for 10 along a street, then catch another one for 40 minutes ”
Quite a few do if the street in question is Cooper’s Row EC3 or Melcombe Street NW1.

Fandroid
30 March 2016 at 13:57

Pondering a bit on the truly London part of HS2 referred to in the article.

To tunnel rather than use the surface right of way. This far out, the underground obstructions are likely to be few, if there are any at all. The geology should be the relatively benign London Clay. Well understood and not likely to present ‘unknown unknowns’. No station required, so a straightforward tunnelling job. The product created by the TBM is a nice solid foundation for the tracks, somewhere convenient to hang the overhead electrification, and provides easy locations for communications cables. No need to dig up the existing trackbed. No need for extra ground preparation works. No need to plan working around adjacent electrified and busy Tube tracks. No need to allow for the public at the intermediate stations. A 24 hour worksite with constant temperature, few noise issues and no weather problems. I’m surprised they don’t tunnel all the way to Birmingham.

Anomnibus
30 March 2016 at 14:22

@Fandroid:

Indeed, I’ve argued in the past that tunnelling is often cheaper than politicans and lawyers. On the other hand, it does mean you don’t get much of a view from the trains, though that does reduce the pressure to make all the seats line up with the windows!

Putting HS2 in so much tunnel over this section also greatly reduces its exposure to the vicissitudes of the nation’s famously interesting weather.

timbeau
30 March 2016 at 14:31

@Fandroid
“I’m surprised they don’t tunnel all the way to Birmingham.”
The view won’t be up to much, but on many modern trains it seems the seating plan and window spacing have been designed by different committees, each sworn never to acknowledge then other’s existence, let alone exchange information with them, so maybe it wouldn’t matter.

Steve
30 March 2016 at 15:23

Has the cost difference for tickets on HS2 been confirmed yet? I’m not sure the speed alone is enough to make people switch over.

I’m yet to take virgin to Birmingham while the london midland has such a staggering difference in price.

Alex
30 March 2016 at 16:51

Commuter perspective at reduced service pattern for WCML services post-HS2 might be offset if some southerly WCML services are re-routed onto Crossrail, as per LR article from August 2014http://www.londonreconnections.com/2014/coming-across-rail-turmoil/
If this were extended northwards, CR to Coventry for example would be a very interesting offset to a reduced Euston offering.

Kate
30 March 2016 at 17:35

“…..cannot think of any significant examples of journeys where commuters catch a train for 10-20 minutes, then walk for 10 along a street, then catch another one for 40 minutes ”

Holborn to Bank, walk to Cannon St, Cannon St to Kent

Kate
30 March 2016 at 17:52

It’s a great article, but two points haven’t yet come out strongly either in the article or comments.

1. An overall journey time based on 400Kmh trains will never be possible even if suitable train sets were bought because of the lower speed limits in tunnels. I am also not clear which tunnels will be 360Kmh and which 230 but adding more tunnels increases overall journey times.

2. Classic trains between London and Ashford (Kent) and Canterbury remain very popular despite the faster HS1 alternative. Passenger numbers in HS1 were fairly slow to grow suggesting HS1 attracted some commuters for whom the old classic services had previously put Kent beyond their maximum acceptable commuting time.

Likewise many regular passengers prefer Chiltern from Birmingham to Marylebone to Virgin to Euston.

HS2 will be used but I think the extent to which it will abstract traffic from WCML / Chiltern in Phase 1 is very much up for debate.

Bel Eben
30 March 2016 at 18:33

(@Richard Gadsden:) “Just to briefly point out that while trains from the “North” (Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh) to Birmingham may not carry a particularly large fraction of the passengers, they will probably be 200m trains rather than the 400m trains on the main routes to London, so they will not be as spectacularly empty as might be expected from a first glance.”

According to HS2, there were 400 two-way weekday Leeds – Birmingham journeys in 2010-2011, so not enough to fill one 200-metre train.

(@Rational Plan:) “To create the intercity mainlines of today, many small towns lost their stations or over the years have lost a lot of services to make way for all the express services.”

Stations like Castlethorpe closed because there was not enough business. Not to ‘make way for all the express services’.

(@Alex:) “If this were extended northwards, CR to Coventry for example would be a very interesting offset to a reduced Euston offering.”

But what is the line capacity effect of running 90mph Crossrail trains to Coventry?

James Bunting
30 March 2016 at 19:31

Kate 1752

Surely the main hindrance to growth of HS1 from Kent, apart from the premium fare charged, was because it did not go where the punters wanted to. Many people in Kent have jobs in the City, because it was easy to get to, either going into Cannon Street or London Bridge. Those needing the West End had Charing Cross and, for some, Victoria as well. St Pancras (STP) was not convenient to the main areas of employment. The additional cost of a Zone 1 fare to get anywhere more than outweighed the speed benefit.

I would suggest that the reduction of classic route services to give paths for HS1 services has pushed more people into having to go via STP.

Jonathan Roberts
30 March 2016 at 19:53

@Kate
HS1 Javelin as an exemplar is covered in what will probably be Part 3 (depending on how the next sections are edited).

Anomnibus
30 March 2016 at 20:30

@Kate:

1. The longest tunnel is also on the approach to Old Oak Common station, so any trains inside it will be either accelerating away, or slowing down to stop. (All trains are currently expected to call at OOC station.) It’s worth noting that HS1’s section between St. Pancras and Ebbsfleet stations is also limited to 140 mph. However, as Eurostar trains take a while to get up to full line speed, this isn’t a big deal. 140 mph. is also the top speed of the Class 395 (“Javelin”) commuter trains.

2. The classic services are more popular with North and East Kent commuters as they get little benefit from HS1: the trains join and leave it at Ebbsfleet, so they’re only running at full speed for a mere 17-ish minutes, and they stop at both Ebbsfleet itself and Stratford International on the way. The rest of the journey is spent on the existing network, which has some very severe, and lengthy, permanent speed restrictions in the Medway area. (The sharp curves mean trains have to crawl into and out of Strood station at just 15 mph, for example.)

However, the services that use HS1 all the way down to Ashford are proving very popular as they get to spend much more of their time travelling at high speed.

HS2 will likely see a period of adjustment, followed by slow growth as travel patterns gradually change to take advantage of it. It’ll be a generation or so before it reaches its full potential. Bear in mind that even Eurostar services had to wait until 2003 for the first part of HS1 to open, and didn’t move to St. Pancras until 2007. It’s still a very young bit of infrastructure and will take a while yet to reach its potential.

Anonymike (Northern Reporter)
30 March 2016 at 21:55

From occasional trips along HS1, I get the feeling that Stratford-in-the-hole is a more popular destination than St Pancras. I wonder if the same will be true of Old Oak compared to Euston…

Richard Gadsden
30 March 2016 at 22:15

There’s a wonderful map that HS2 produced showing which station provides a shorter journey from various parts of London. Basically, East and West London are better served by Old Oak (thanks largely to Crossrail), North and South London by Euston.

Sadly, I’ve never seen a high-quality version, just a cameraphone photo of a PowerPoint slide. Might be worth a search and an FOI.

timbeau
30 March 2016 at 22:27

Extraoplating the relative attractiveness of HS2 and WCML from the relative popularity of HS1 and the original SECR routes may be unwise. For Kentish commuters, they have the choice of a fast train to the edge of the central zone and a slow train to the heart of the City or West End. Birmingham will have the choice of a fast train to Euston and a slow train to, errm…….Euston.

Richard Gadsden
30 March 2016 at 22:48

Birmingham will have a choice of a very fast train to Euston, a fast train to Euston, a middling-speed train to Marylebone or a slow train to Euston.

I wonder if there will actually be a demand for an express service on WCML at all, or if it’s just the London Midland that survives.

Anonymous
30 March 2016 at 22:49

As regards the Javelin services to St Pancras, maybe they needed the full redevelopment of the Kings Cross area to ensure full loads of passengers?

timbeau
30 March 2016 at 23:34

@Richard Gadsden “wonders if there will actually be a demand for an express service on WCML at all”

Wulfranians and Coventrians will still want direct services to London.

Anonymous Soothsayer
30 March 2016 at 23:41

@Jonathan Roberts
The imperial architects of the Tokaido line may have had visions into the 21st century, but you’re side-stepping the the rest of what I wrote – their forward vision was proportionally much greater than HS2’s vision of 400km/h, which is a mere 30% on today’s top speeds compared to the 60% increase we’ve seen since the 1970s. On that trajectory 400km/h will be inadequate by the 22nd century, not applauded.

Bel Eben
30 March 2016 at 23:58

(@Richard Gadsden: ) “I wonder if there will actually be a demand for an express service on WCML at all, or if it’s just the London Midland that survives.”

The majority of locations served by Virgin Trains West Coast would not be served by the HS2 Y network (e.g. Coventry, Sandwell and Dudley, Stockport). And demand for HS2 travel to/from Birmingham or Manchester would be low, if users actually had to pay the costs of providing it.

Suppose the infrastructure costs £42.6 billion, the money is borrowed at 1% interest, and every one of the ~35 million VTWC journeys in 2014-15 used the HS2 infrastructure.

Then the additional costs just from 1% interest (no capital repayment) would be £24.34 per round trip. For 3% interest, £73.02, etc. With HS2, somebody has to pick up the bill, there is no free lunch.

JM
31 March 2016 at 01:02

“However, no commuter stations are planned on this section of line, which is a cause of mixed opinions in the commuter territory served. HS2 Ltd is clear why this is, the railway is intended for intercity flows, and line capacity would be lost by trains slowing and accelerating to serve intermediate stops.”

Really don’t understand why this is unworkable – the Tokaido Shinkansen manages perfectly well with a mixture of stopping patterns (Nozomi/Hikari/Kodama). A “Shin-Aylesbury” station, plus a couple more before getting to Birmingham, seems perfectly achievable to me.

Anonymous Soothsayer
31 March 2016 at 01:03

@Bel Eben
A turn-up-and-go off-peak return from London to Glasgow today costs £135.10. If you want to leave London before 0930 you can expect to pay £365. And that’s just standard class.

Adding £24.34 to those numbers for a faster journey doesn’t seem too outrageous to me. The business crowd will certainly pay it.

But that isn’t how it works anyway because your logic disregards costs included in the current fares – the expensive business of maintaining a 19th century railway to provide the current service, and paying down the £10bn spent on the last upgrade.

DPWH
31 March 2016 at 06:14

I think some people are overly focused on the idea of HS2 (what an awful name) being a London-Birmingham scheme. It isn’t – or it shouldn’t be. Birmingham is too close to London to see anything other than localised benefits. The time gained by having high speed will be largely offset by having to get to the HS station against using more conveniently located existing stations with slower trains.

What it should be considered as is a national scheme for long-distance travel between London and the North, which happens to have a branch towards Birmingham because is Birmingham too big to bypass completely – though most trains will. Phase 2 has already been planned; I expect phase 3/4 plans will be outlined soon after phase 1 construction starts.

Greg Tingey
31 March 2016 at 08:13

Anonymike
Because Stratford unintentional is a potential (slow) change for Liverpool St rather than going to KXStP & back again.
Even more so once the Liziline opens

Jonathan Roberts
31 March 2016 at 08:29

@ Anonymous Soothsayer
30 March 2016 at 23:41

GB is a long island north-south without the population density of built-up coastal Japan. There will be limits to the economic merits of ever faster trains. The HS railway’s function in Britain is also to serve the largest intermediate city regions, which is how HS2 is designing things even if with few stations per city region.

The latest HS2 report on taking HS2 to Scotland published by the DfT is a good illustration of the economic limits of high speed. It prices various levels of undiscounted capital cost but with incomplete other costs. This is for options ranging from a series of bypasses via West or East Coast (£17-20 billion on top of Phase 2 costs) to a full new main line (£22-25 billion for 3 hour timings, £27-43 billion for 2½ hour timings). 60-year discounted benefits are crudely estimated as something over £11 billion for the fastest (2½ hour) London-Glasgow/Edinburgh option, £7 billion for a 3 hour option. So poor value for money even if it wins some political points.

Graham H
31 March 2016 at 08:44

@100andthirty – sorry not to have responded earlier to your surprise (?) that HS2 doesn’t release “lots of paths” on WCML. The point is very straightforward – as timbeau remarks, Wulfrunians, Coventryites – and Rugbyites – not onlyMKists, will still expect their direct services to London and other places. It’s the need to maintain these that eats up the available paths, many of which look remarkably like what is there now. Sure they may be able to be “tidied up” to avoid bunching, but, you, as a railwayman, will know why they were bunched/flighted in the first place. Removal of flighting may well eat up further capacity on WCML. BTW it isn’t just the places s of Brum that have this effect – the good burghers of Runcorn and Stoke will be making such demands, too – and once we get to the East Midlands, where every major city is missed, the demands will become irresistible.*

@Bel Eben – your heart’s in the right place, but – 1% interest – if only! That would require a government guarantee and so far HMT is seeking private sector money – think 10-15% interest without a guarantee. (Coincidentally, I discussed this yesterday with a couple of merchant bank credit committee managers who believed that without a guarantee, money could not be found at all for HS2.) NR’s fares’ assumptions about HS2 – supplied by HS2 Ltd – are that fares will be the same as for WCML. That implies an enormous subsidy somewhere in the system but the showmen haven’t told us yet.

@JM – you can stop HS2 trains at every lamp post if you choose but every stop costs about 7 or 8 minutes in extra journey time , so your idea that there might be three or four intermediate stops would make the journey time much the same as now… Good, no?

* It is a cry of the arrogant to suggest that the problem is solved by withdrawing through services (eg from Holyhead) because they are “surely” insignificant. Just another case of that irregular verb:

“my through service is vital for the national economy /your through service is a doubtful luxury/his through service is a gross waste of money and resources”

100andthirty
31 March 2016 at 09:48

Graham H……I am absolutely with you, sorry if my rambling implied otherwise. But I do believe there will be more stops on what are now fast services and there will probably have to be more stations with two platforms per direction (like London Bridge Thameslink), to allow stopping trains not to impede the even flow on the main line and even allow fast trains to pass stoppers.

StephenC
31 March 2016 at 10:12

HS2 will no doubt provide additional capacity, but there are huge missed opportunities that impact on WCML capacity, and ultimately therefore on London commuting.

Consider what would happen if four additional links were built from HS2 to the existing network.
– a link allowing trains to run from Birmingham Parkway to Coventry
– a link near Lichfield to allow trains to run from Birmingham Parkway to Derby via Burton-on-Trent
– a link near East Midlands Airport to allow trains to access Nottingham
– a link in the Curzon Street approach to allow trains to run to New Street
(noting some electrification would also be needed for Derby and Nottingham)

These four links would allow the timetable to be recast using Birmingham Parkway as a national hub station. Some services that would be feasible:
– Derby to Euston via Burton, Birmingham Parkway, Coventry, Rugby, MK and Watford
– Nottingham to Bristol, via Birmingham Parkway, Coventry, Leamington, Banbury, Oxford, Swindon and Bath
– Wolverhampton to Euston, via New Street, Birmingham Parkway and either HS2 or WCML
(other combinations possible, these are just to indicate the new connections)

This would transform HS2, from a separate network to part of the existing one, without impacting on HS2 reliability or capacity (there is some spare capacity on each northern leg, and the proposed extra links would imply extra platforms at Birmingham Parkway). Try planning a route from Oxford to Manchester with HS2 as currently planned. It may well be fastest via Old Oak Common, which cannot be good for London capacity (current time 2h45, journey via Old Oak with full HS2 roughly 2h10). Note that oddities like this abound, because Birmingham Parkway is separate from Birmingham International

So, given the links above, the WCML and London commuting service could be simplified, with perhaps 2tph to Crewe, 4tph to Birmingham Parkway and 4tph to Northampton, all calling at all major stations in a regular pattern. ie. HS2 tracks absorbing more of the load that Graham H is referring to (and I’m assuming that Stoke will be served directly via HS2, which seems likely)

Southern Heights (Light Railway)
31 March 2016 at 10:18

@130: London Bridge Thameslink will only have one platform per direction… One physical platform for both if you want to be really pedantic (sorry PoP!)… It’s the Charing Cross lines that get two each way…

As an aside, actually it is the Charing Cross platforms at London Bridge that will be 2up/2down but single track in each direction on either side. Hopefully one day we will get something similar at East Croydon on the fast lines.

The fallacy is because capacity is only maintained if all trains call. This is obvious once you think about it because the stopping train must occupy a train path prior to the fast train and a separate train path subsequent to it. You can reduce the impact if multiple trains call by doing some clever sequencing but then you either have very long dwell times at the station(s) involved or you are back to flighting the stopping trains (with a consistent one or two fast trains between each stopper). It could almost work if you genuinely could justify at least 6tph, preferably 8tph, stopping at the station.

Malcolm
31 March 2016 at 10:31

StephenC: Some interesting ideas there. Unfortunately I have to remind you, and those contemplating responding, that this site is called London Reconnections for a reason. You do bring in the impact on London in your comment, so it has narrowly avoided the knife, but it does skate very near the edge…

StephenC
31 March 2016 at 11:03

Malcolm, thanks for not cutting. I think its important to note that Birmingham Parkway is no further away *in time terms* than places such as Haywards Heath or Tonbridge, and closer than Colchester or Maidstone. This means that there is the potential for reasonable commuting volumes to London from key HS2 stations. How that induced demand is dealt with will certainly affect London in a big way.

Alan Griffiths
31 March 2016 at 11:29

StephenC 31 March 2016 at 10:12

I think you missed

a link near Bicester to allow (Cross-country) trains to run from HS2 south to Oxford, Reading, Southampton and Bournemouth.

ngh
31 March 2016 at 11:34

Re Malcolm, Stephen, timbeau, Kate et al

One point on Birmingham that has so far been missed by everyone bringing up the 10 minute walk from New Street to Curzon Street (and is it too far to walk?) is that not all rail lines in Birmingham converge on New Street, the lines from Kidderminster in the West and Stratford (upon Avon) and Leamington to the southeast converge on Moor Street Station which is adjacent to the new HS2 station at Curzon Street with services provided by London Midland and Chiltern. HS2 gives current (and lots more potential) passengers on those lines who tend to use Chiltern to get to London (Moor Street etc. to London Marylebone) a much more frequent and faster service to London than is currently provided by Chiltern.

This opens up the question as to whether Chiltern would continue to provide fast London – Birmingham services as they currently do or alter their services significantly and improve the commuter offering at the London (and Birmingham) ends.
Post 2026 the NNML alignment offers the tempting (remarkably cheap) possibility of connecting to the new crossrail station at OOC with the Chiltern routes (presumably with 10tph turnback occurring there unless HEx has died with CR to Tring (WCML stoppers) also in the graveyard) bypassing capacity issues at Marylebone but that would involve plenty of multi-party thought, planning and execution so is unlikely! It might also prove to be one bigger improvements for London commuters and might even have placated some of the Chiltern and NW London opposition to HS2…

ngh
31 March 2016 at 11:50

Re Jonathan,

(Huge) Costs to improve journey times to Scotland:

How about starting with some much cheaper and quicker solutions like removing the 20-30mph line speeds in the Carstairs (WCML) and Newcastle areas 😉

Re Jonathan, Graham et al.

Part of the solution to debt repayment issues is the massive increase in the number of bums on seats as HS2 would be providing far more seats than VWC.

I suspect optimisation of capacity on the WCML post HS2 expected running speeds dropping to 110mph and the abandonment of tilt so uniform 110mph running on the fasts combined with lower track maintenance costs…

Jonathan Roberts
31 March 2016 at 12:39

@ngh
Part of the Scotland journey time problem is that in the absence of tilting HS ‘classic compatible’ trains, HS2 makes only marginal net time gains to Glasgow via WCML, while Pendolinos score well north of Crewe on the existing railway. [Dare I wonder if a different train design solution might emerge in due course to solve that? Throwing lots of money at a new straighter line might not be the only option.]

I recommend reading the Scotland report for the options considered – there were many, with different ways of getting the journey time down and line capacity up. In the end, if a target journey time were the objective (3 hours seems to be the basic political imperative), then the early evidence is that you end up incurring a disproportionate cost if you must build most or all of a new line to achieve that, relative to the benefits derived.

If you start with a different objective, such as ‘what is the optimum journey time/extra capacity versus benefits gained, for Anglo-Scottish travel?’, then your own approach might score higher results, just as it was eventually realised with West Coast Route Modernisation in the 2000s that higher top speeds mattered less for VfM than raising the average speed by improving the slowest sections of line and bottlenecks.

However – back to a more London-adjoining locale – line capacity issues are the most critical factor south of Rugby/Roade, hence a new railway of some sort.

One problem with an objective like that, certainly for the person in the street or the politician, is that it is too multifaceted to get one’s head round. Something straightforward like a 3 hour target is much easier to grasp. (And it does seem to hit the spot as regards competition with air).

But yes, it’s an important message that extra tracks from London northwards are (or should be) the first focus of any possible big spending on long-distance infrastructure. It’s the apparent grasping of such a message that most pleases me about the HS2 project, regardless of details like exactly where it goes, or what is its top speed or gauge.

Graham H
31 March 2016 at 13:01

@ngh – I think it’s not often appreciated the increase in massive bums on seats needed to fund the whole HS2 shooting match. The maintenance and opex costs are likely to be of the order of at least WC and quite possibly (given the higher maintenance/inspection requirements for the higher speed), the equivalent of an extra WC and EC combined. That would imply a similar increase in traffic. All this before any attempt to service capital.

If the gismo is privately financed by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Fund, as usual, then the carrying charges and depreciation on the £50bn will come out at about £15bn pa. That’s the equivalent of adding a whole new UK rail system (and then some!) to be financed from fares and subsidies, even before opex is considered. Even if the money comes from HMT, the carrying charges are still likely to be around £3-3.5bn at current interest rates. Add in the opex and you are looking at something twice as large as all the InterCity businesses combined.

I leave it to others (and it’s not relevant to this thread) to judge on the likelihood of scale of bummery required. But not so much a solution as a problem, perhaps.

On the Chiltern issue, the management has always argued that the core of their market in the W Midlands is traffic from stations to the S of central Brum, and I would imagine that there will be little incentive for those punters to travel backwards to Curzon Street for the pleasure of using HS2. If there is an increase in commuting from Brum to London, that’s a likely place.

Phil
31 March 2016 at 13:08

Re HS1, as someone who uses this everyday I can report that whilst Stratford Int is popular the vast majority of passengers carry on to St. Pancras. The link at Stratford Int to the tube lines is a reasonable walk (except the DLR) and this is where Old Oak Common should take note if the intention is to relieve Euston. The HS1 trains are equally as full as long distance lines on SE or SWT, and more are required. Interestingly the trains to/from Medway are usually busier than the Ashford trains, although I imagine a large number catch the train from Gravesend as there is indeed a significant time saving from there of about half an hour each way compared to the traditional lines. Despite a slow start, passenger volumes have noticeably increased in the last 2 years on all routes. Regarding arriving in St. P as opposed to say Victoria, unless Victoria is walking distance from your destination then the Victoria line serves the same central stations of course eg Oxford Circus from either terminal. Equally if you work in Bank then the Northern line connects St. P and London Bridge – although admittedly you can walk to Bank from London Bridge in about 15 minutes.

Jim Cobb
31 March 2016 at 13:10

@Graham H – with these sorts of figures, it is difficult to see that there is enough latent demand to provide the number of bums on seats required. So how to other countries finance their high speed rail systems ?

I know the French use classic lines and existing terminals, with the high-speed bits being out in the country. So does this sort of solution reduce the cost enough to make it more affordable ?

100andthirty
31 March 2016 at 13:13

PoP…….thanks for clarifying what I had failed to write accurately. What you described applies where all the trains are the same, and they all stop. …..maximising the thoughput. If, though, you have a though station that, for commercial reasons, needs not all trains to stop, and, perhaps not all the trains are the same, then two platform faces per direction provides a great deal of flexibility, provided, that is trains’ run in and run out speed profiles aren’t constrakned by the points used to access the platforms.

timbeau
31 March 2016 at 13:26

Whether it’s the ten minute walk from New Street or the five minute walk from Moor Street isn’t the point – Wulfranians, Coventrians, Kidderminsterites, Solihullers etc are accustomed to not having to walk between platforms, let alone stations, and if they lose their through services (because Curzon Street is a dead end) they will get in their cars and drive – possibly to Birmingham-not-really-international Parkway, but probably all the way to where they are going.

Mark
31 March 2016 at 13:42

@graham “increase in massive bums on seats”

We need more obese people to travel?

ngh
31 March 2016 at 14:52

Re Graham H,

“I think it’s not often appreciated the increase in massive bums on seats needed to fund the whole HS2 shooting match.”

Indeed and the reason they are looking at 3+2 seating after not going for double deck. The demand pricing model will be very interesting…

OPEX – I’d hope this should be comparatively reasonable rather as there shouldn’t be any real civil /structures costs within the infrastructure debt period as it is new well designed infrastructure with none of the WCML costs with items like replacing the bridge at Watford Jn last year occurring every year! The infrastructure is designed to be high reliability and easily maintained (e.g. easy access with an access road on surface tracks and wide track + mast spacing so equipmetn use is less restricted) without the current routes issues from 1830s-1850s.
The reduced curvature (the main factor in track wear for given usage rate) of HS2 compared to existing lines should reduce wear significantly so RCF (type 3 fatigue) will be the main track design focus (given minimal cant and cant deficiency being allowed in design specs). Fitting heat treated /pearlitic / alloy rail if appropriate will easily pay for itself given the load factors and reduced maintenance (recent Swiss and Dutch practice to examine carefully).
Interestingly they have gone for max axle load 17t which had big effect on maintenance in France when they were able to reduce it to that on the TGV locos… (NR like to keep it less than 12.5)

Graham H
31 March 2016 at 15:05

@ngh – replacing a bridge is capex, not opex, alas. Whilst I wouldn’t disagree that the opex costs should reflect the use of modern materials and methods, the very fact that it’s to be used by high speed trains, regardless of axle load will jack up the opex costs – for example, SNCF experience on high speed lines (the Swiss have only a very short stretch of that at Rothrist and speeds are low by HS2 standards) is that inspection is required twice daily, and whilst they refused to disclose the precise figure for us, even the French blenched at the costs of maintaining high speed switches and crossings.

We know – because HS2 have told the planners – what their pricing assumption should be and that is that prices should be the same as on the classic network – so they start with a hand tied behind their back…

Not sure why you think the capacity of the train in terms of seats is relevant. The seats won’t fill because they are there, nor do more seats make for a higher income if you can’t get commensurately more income. The question that remains unanswered is whether the service – of however many seats/hr – can actually earn enough cash to pay for things. For scaling the problem, the number of seats is irrelevant – it’s the service’s earning power.

@Jim Cobb – the French borrow hard! The Dutch use private finance in the form of a PPP (and look where that got them). I cannot explain how the Spanish finance their LGVs – it is baffling – the latest line to open (this year) to Zaragossa (?) will have one train per day.

Although the French have splashed out on infrastructure, you are right that they have avoided the cost of some “captive” stations in city centres by running off the LGV lines onto the classic network; indeed some places in Normandy and Brittany are served by TGVs which use the LGV network only marginally – but then speeds are that much slower. One notices that even the French are cutting back on their LGV plans in the Est and Rhone/Rhin routes.

Does French practice make their LGVs cheaper? It is literally impossible for outsiders (ie persons outwith the SNCF finance department) to know precisely how costs are handled – “Unleash…..Alan Robinson… [gasps of terror] – my experience with working with SNCF and their tame consultants is that costs are moved around to conceal them. I suspect that there is an enormous cross-subsidy from their classic network to the LGV network – the clues seem to be the very poor financial performance of classic lines linking quite major cities. My fear for the UK rail system is that the HS2 system will have a similar financial cuckoo effect . [We are now so far off topic and away from London that I’d better shut up!]

@Mark 🙂 We’re back to charging by weight again!

Malcolm
31 March 2016 at 15:34

If more passengers are carried, and each passenger’s fare pays more than the direct cost of taking that passenger (ticket sale, and appropriate share of things like fuel and cleaning costs) then each extra passenger helps to cover the fixed cost.

Of course empty seats earn nothing as long as they are empty. But high train capacity will, I reckon, bring in extra money – at least at peak times, which for this line may be 0800 to 1800. Granted paying the financing will still be a heroic struggle though, even with the best possible pricing strategy (whatever that is).

Malcolm
31 March 2016 at 15:39

Graham suggests that French rail costs are moved around to conceal them. I might add that this is hardly a strategy limited to SNCF, or indeed to the rail industry or to any particular country. Which leads me to the view that in appropriate cases, economists should be put back in their box, and we should just build things where “we know it makes sense”. (If only we could agree on that!).

ngh
31 March 2016 at 16:27

Re Graham H,

“Not sure why you think the capacity of the train in terms of seats is relevant. The seats won’t fill because they are there, nor do more seats make for a higher income if you can’t get commensurately more income. The question that remains unanswered is whether the service – of however many seats/hr – can actually earn enough cash to pay for things. For scaling the problem, the number of seats is irrelevant – it’s the service’s earning power.”

I think we actually largely agree but I didn’t go that far with the detail as a spreadsheet says a thousand words!
If the seats aren’t there you can’t fill them and charge people for the privilege (on the assumption no standing allowed). The high fares will mostly be in the normal peaks (excluding weekend sports matches along with the highest passenger numbers so a reasonable chunk of revenue will come from peak passengers (pax x price paid). The 3+2 is useful because it increases max passengers by about 200-250 per 400m train if filled in the peaks (or possibly more interestingly allows the use of comparatively shorter trains initially which could reduce up front cost, so instead of a captive 310m train with 2+2 at introduction in 2026 you go for 1 less carriage but with 3+2 in standard with reduced leasing and maintenance (train and track) costs till you can justify ordering more carriages). If you don’t have “extra” seat you’ve effectively reduced the degrees of freedom to generate the revenue, having the options is key.

100andthirty
31 March 2016 at 16:36

LBM……… yes RCF is Rolling Contact Fatigue, but not wear. Explaining very simply (as this is a very complex subject still not completely understood) it is a mechanism by which the stresses imposed by wheel/rail forces can eventually cause the wheels and rails to crack. It is a form of damage, and not wear as such. Indeed the impact of RCF can be managed by introducing “controlled wear” (explained later). In the old days when trains generally rode badly, the movement of the wheel on rails caused generally more rapid wear and this wear tended to wear off layers of “fatigued” metal before it could crack. delivering good ride led to more fatigue.

The controlled wear I spoke of above is rail grinding – removing the fatigued top surface of the rail and restoring its profile and wheel turning – restoring the wheel profile and removing the cracked or fatigued areas. There’s lots more on this, but probably this is all that is relevant to this thread.

Graham H….Regarding inspection of the track twice a day, this sounds extraordinary and, I suspect, is probably a hangover from the early days of TGV. I would expect the track on HS2 to be examined several times a day – by the passenger trains themselves – and for the huge amount of data generated to be analysed by powerful computers to identify interventions required long before any faults become a safety risk. Well designed and maintained track (including the features mentioned by ngh – splendid steel types from Tata Steel) doesn’t fail without ample warning if the right parameters are monitored. This is one of the fastest moving areas of railway technology; it has come on in leaps and bounds over the last 5 years and will be VERY mature by the time HS2 goes into service

Graham H
31 March 2016 at 16:55

@100andthirty – thank you for the gloss on inspection regimes. As far as I could tell, the French system involved running the track monitoring train along the line before the start of commercial service, followed by a manual inspection during the period blanche (did I mention the French unions…?) whilst they did the routine maintenance – allegedly.

@ngh – it’s a difficult judgement isn’t it? 3+2 will be the usual quality turnoff (love TLK) but the demand is likely to be as peaky as it is now on WC. Whether it is worth trying to accommodate the Friday pm peak and sporting events is unclear – Damned if you do (3+2) damned if you don’t (cattle trucks, people standing in the loo etc). Financially, the commercial problem is that you need to fill all those seats all day every day at premium prices ;whether the demand is actually there (except in the minds of skyscrapercity enthusiasts) aand whether 3+2 seating will command premium prices if completely filled is , err, speculative. One particular issue concerning pricing and “buying volume” is that the business market won’t stand for being squashed in, commuters may albeit through gritted teeth, but they just, well, commute, and for most of the day are at their desks, and the leisure market won’t pay much of a premium for short journey times.

Thank you for the clarification. In researching this term I did see many references to the detailed technical causes, but had chosen to merely offer the summary term offered ‘wear’ injudiciously.

100andthirty
31 March 2016 at 17:14

Graham H and others…….3+2 seats………..Whilst the middle seat of a 3 seater will never be popular, if they get the pitch and width right, it might at least be tolerable. If the width is as per a Pendolino or class 350/1 standard class seat with a pitch approximately that of the ‘mobility impaired’ seats, it won’t be too bad. If there is space for 2+2 in first class using, say, Pendolino seats, that won’t be too bad either. What I want to see is 3+2 around tables!

RCF usually involves the growth of fatigue cracks at a circa 15degree angle to the rail surface in the direction of travel. The rail – wheel contact causes plastic deformation in both the wheel and rail. In the rail the relative cyclic (all fatigue is due to cyclic loading) shear of the plastically deformed region at the rail surface vs the underlying more ductile region causes the crack growth, this crack growth can be monitored and managed for decades. When the cracks reach about 10mm below the surface they start growing downwards very very rapidly, the problem is that could be at 20Mcycles or 400Mcycles hence the need for NDT (ultrasonic testing etc.).

The HS2 testing regime will apparently be similar with a test train and overnight inspections / maintenance.

I suspect there may be a 3 tier class structure on HS2 to cope with the business needs so they avoid the triple seats without 1st being written on the ticket (if they still exist in a decade!).

Each car the captive sets are shorter on delivery saves circa £200m in purchase cost across the fleet so potentially worth deferring for few years?

The interesting bit will almost be what they do to generate revenue off peak – the obvious answer could be very good for tourist industry…

Graham H
31 March 2016 at 18:51

“The interesting bit will almost be what they do to generate revenue off peak” – possibly a rush to the bottom in competition with the classic lines – temporary good news for leisure travellers, longterm bad news for everyone.

Jonathan Roberts
31 March 2016 at 19:03

@GH, ngh etc
No one has yet said what the franchising structure will be for HS2, whether within or outwith the West Coast Route franchise. I reference this in a later Part of the HS series, but it is at least worth some initial consideration.

Economisticas
31 March 2016 at 21:40

I am puzzled about why people are discussing the fact that fares won’t cover the costs. Why do you think it should? We don’t expect it to do so for the rest of the rail network so why should it for HS2? We usually worry about the BCR when we build a new line, for which the HS2 is OK (not great but not bad either…enough to meet the usual requirements for a new line but only just).

Graham H
31 March 2016 at 22:25

@economisticas -the issues with subsidy are twofold – is the subsidy buying a public good at the right price? And where is the additional subsidy going to come from ? These are difficult questions to answer in the absence of any public acknowledgement that subsidy will be needed. Matters have been complicated by the change in the rationale for building the line. At first, it was about regional development, now about capacity.

Tiger Tanaka
31 March 2016 at 22:42

@Phil,

How much do you think HS1’s Javelins take in their own right and not because the existing service is slowed down? I mean if they introduced faster Medway to Victoria services say non-stop from Rochester would passengers be more inclined to use such a service or still HS1?

Tiger Tanaka
31 March 2016 at 22:47

Plus, would a high speed to Glasgow be more cost effective if the HS2 train made extra stops at Central Birmingham and Manchester?

Anonymous Soothsayer
31 March 2016 at 23:39

@Jonathan Roberts
So you’re linking to a report commissioned by the DfT to determine what is and isn’t economically viable for Britain’s railways today, in response to my comment about what might be expected in 50-100 years’ time?

Can I draw your attention to “The Reshaping of British Railways” written by a certain Dr Beeching for the predecessor of the DfT in 1963? And a similar report by Sir David Serpell published in 1982?

Like a lot of things, the economics and politics of railways have changed radically in a comparatively short period of time, and there’s no reason to suggest that that is suddenly going to stop happening.

No-one can predict the future, but a look at the past tells us the future will bring changes on a scale that confound our expectations. We’ll always want to get to places (even) faster, somehow, it’s human nature, and the past backs that up too.

Anonymous Soothsayer
1 April 2016 at 01:31

For those who’ve discussed capex/opex and other aspects of financing:

Capex (Capital Expenditure) and Opex (Operational Expenditure) are useful financial reporting terms but they don’t reflect actual cash flow. In terms of debt and how it’s financed, discussion of Capex versus Opex is somewhat of a distraction. The important piece is more the cash flow statement. Costs aren’t avoided by being classed as capex, they’re just accounted for across multiple periods. In reality you still need the cash to spend on whatever it is, which means more borrowing and more interest if necessary.

When discussing the financing of a long-term project such as HS2, it’s absolutely essential to consider the effect of inflation (for example using terms like NPV). If HS2 is to have a debt to be paid over 50 years (say) the value of that full original debt at the end of the repayment period is likely to be less than a quarter of what it was at the beginning. Meanwhile the fares will have 50 years worth of inflationary increases.

The interesting thing about funding massive investment projects right now, and the reason everyone is (or should be) so absolutely desperate to do so, is that borrowing can be had for less than the rate of inflation, particularly if it’s government backed. That means that the real-terms value of the borrowing reduces all by itself.

Jonathan Roberts
1 April 2016 at 07:30

@AS
Agree that change happens, and the fact that high speed lines are being taken forward is a change from Eddington and 2006! However the economics of change don’t necessarily favour ever higher speed, and that is the underlying lesson from the DfT report, not whether a new line or two is eventually built between England and Scotland (which it might be, for reasons we can speculate).

Higher speed is actually an ‘input’, the ‘output’ can be shorter journey times, and the ‘outcome’ can be translated various ways in terms of land use changes, how the population chooses to allocate its time, and general economic impact. If you regard reducing journey times as a ‘good’, then getting the average time down and capacity up, can often be better VfM and benefit more of society than higher speed on its own. Switzerland’s ‘Taktfahrplan’ comes to mind.

Even better interchanges, for example, where walking and waiting are valued in Britain at 2-2½ x in-vehicle time. I note that HS2 is currently struggling to achieve anything like good connectivity at a number of its proposed stations, leading to the paradox that, as others have commented already, some or many in the West Midlands might find the ‘classic’ railway via New Street to Euston still as quick as trying to access Curzon Street, and possibly resulting in less than expected capacity relief for the WCML.

The biggest factor facing UK at present is population growth, with the government actuary projecting over 80 million by the 2080s. Where’s that going to be located? – mostly in denser cities and towns, fewer in the countryside. So there is going to be enormous pressure on future urban and inter-urban transport capacity, where the bulk of journeys are relatively short distance even on inter-urban. The future railway has to address this above all – a topic which is indeed light years away from Beeching’s and Serpell’s priorities (thank goodness). Network Rail and DfT are at least now focused on growth of capacity rather than reduction.

I see HS lines as having an important role in the future – I wrote the future chapter in a report on Britain’s railways in 2009 (‘A Century of Change’) which looked to a 2,500 km network 100 years from now (and encompassing parts of Ireland as well as Great Britain). The primary need for those lines was foreseen to relieve the capacity burden on existing lines, not for higher speed per se although that came with the package. This means such lines have to be designed to achieve the primary purposes efficiently, while also underpinning a better connected nation.

Graham H
1 April 2016 at 08:25

@AS – unfortunately for you, as I have explained here before, governments run on cash. Borrow this year for a project and you take the whole hit at one go now. DCF has nothing to do with finance – it’s merely a means of comparing project A with variant B. Nor does the effect of discounting get you out of the fact that (a) even if much reduced in real terms, when you get to the end of the project life you still have to find the actual pelf to pay off the debt you blithely took out 50 years ago; this wouldn’t, of course, matter if inflation had reduced it to the price of a loaf of bread, except that (b) you may then need to buy the project all over again only this time at future prices. This is one reason why people gasp when they see the financing charges for rolling stock – they include depreciation and an uplift for future inflation.

DPWH
1 April 2016 at 10:31

One point regarding network effects is that I think that the French have built their major lines now and are then chasing diminishing returns for new non-core lines. The best VfM section isn’t the first section built but the ones that come after as it is these with which you actually get a network, whilst once you have that core network built, the VfM then drops for any further lines that aren’t in the core but are planned simply because crayons.

A second Paris-Lyon LGV is possibly in the offing and would seem to be better VfM than extending some of the other LGVs. If we draw parallels, this is partly why I see a London-East Midlands link (King’s Cross-Luton Airport-Leicester-Toton) as being important.

Now, also retaining that important London-focus, the LGV Picardie (direct Calais-Amiens-Paris) line would bring down London-Paris times by 20 minutes. Finally, getting the Belgians to bypass Brussels so London trains can more easily get to Cologne or Amsterdam without running through the horrendous Brussels embouteillage would seem to make sense.

Kate
1 April 2016 at 11:25

“If we draw parallels, this is partly why I see a London-East Midlands link (King’s Cross-Luton Airport-Leicester-Toton) as being important.”

That presupposes that the greatest demand for high speed train services is London-centric. Indeed it might be, but I am not sure we should rush to such a conclusion without further study. London is well served by airports and is the hub of the Intercity train network. It seems entirely possible that the greatest suppressed demand for high speed travel lies outside London. A full high speed line on the Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds corridor might well have a greater BCR than a further line to London.

There is also no reason why London cannot be served by classic-compatible trains. We should not assume that high speed track has to reach London. So if HS3 extended the high speed network up the east coast, there’s no reason why some services could not use high speed track north of Leeds (say) but the run to London down the old ECML.

Kate
1 April 2016 at 12:03

Other major European nations have high speed rail to their capital so we want it too. I do fear that snobbery like that might be a large part of the reason why upgrading WCML or reinstating the Grand Central Mainline were so quickly discounted.

I am sure it is why HS trains aren’t intended to run to Euston or Marylebone on classic track which might have made more financial sense, perhaps combined with putting some Euston commuter services underground (running on to somewhere like Holborn maybe?) to free capacity at Euston itself and on the approaches.

Charles
1 April 2016 at 12:46

Think Picadilly line trains – those thin strips of cushion against the wall, in the luggage store area, for passengers to lean against.
Why do these new HS2 and Thameslink designs not have a carriage lined only with this type of lean seating? OK so some people would be too frail to use them, but the majority of passengers (reasonably fit) could use this method no?
There could be a single ‘leaning’ carriage, with a continuous strip of thin cushion along each wall facing inwards, plus two more lengths along the centre back-to-back, each facing outwards.
The lean seats are halfway between a seat and standing, and use less room than a full seat, whilst being just comfortable enough for journeys that are perhaps under one hour.
Amongst discussions for 2/3 vs 2/2 seating plans, could this be a working compromise?

Graham H
1 April 2016 at 13:06

@Kate – I very much agree with you about politicians’ obsession with the new and shiny – how often was one rung up by the SoS demanding “something new to announce today”? Cheaper and more cost effective solutions are rarely shiny enough…

I also agree with your point about DWPH’s slip into crayonism: we simply don’t have enough data to show whether these things are worth doing. I would add, however, that arguing from French (or German or Belgian) circumstances is futile. The demography and economy of France is wholly different to the UK and comparisons in demand are at best misleading and probably ultimately just wrong.

timbeau
1 April 2016 at 14:44

@Kate
“A full high speed line on the Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds corridor might well have a greater BCR than a further line to London”

I’m not sure that out and out speed is the important factor on distances that short, and even on London to Birmingham. Frequency and the ability to turn up and go is just as important (would you rather be able to cross the Pennines in twenty minutes every two hours, or in 45 minutes four times an hour?) Manchester is about 40 miles from Sheffield, Leeds and Liverpool. That is barely enough distance to reach 125mph and brake to a halt again.

HS2 is about speeding up services to the north. Curzon Street is (literally!) a sideline.

DPWH
1 April 2016 at 14:50

Were any alternative termini to Euston seriously considered? Euston doesn’t seem ideal but might have been the least worst option. It interchanges OKish with St Pancras, it will have CR2 links SW and NE. Future Crossrails can be built around it. Where else could it have gone?

[Yes, this question is addressed in part 2 (or maybe 3) of this series, which should be published soon. Please would everyone hold back on comments on this matter, too. Malcolm]

Leo Neo
1 April 2016 at 15:48

Why does the article add “£7.5bn for trains” to the project cost?

Considering the government/tax payer will not be paying for the trains (the TOCs pay for them) why should they be added? We don’t add the cost of buying hundreds of thousands of cars to the cost of building a new stretch of motorway. In both cases the project cost involve the infrastructure, not the vehicles.

Walthamstow Writer
1 April 2016 at 16:05

One thing stands out for me from the various comments is that HS2 feels like an after thought in the context of a national rail network. It’s going to be slapped down on top of the existing network but it doesn’t connect very well. It’s open to question what services will run where or what the consequences will be for other people. The multiple dubious decisions about station locations and lack of interchange seem to be locking in sub optimal travel options for generations to come. And as for the fares, finances and unstated subsidy consequences – help! I simply don’t believe the fares on HS2 will be the same as on existing routes. That one won’t last whatever process is run to secure an operator and confirm the commercial basis for passenger services. The more I read the less and less convinced I am that HS2 is a sensible idea.

Malcolm
1 April 2016 at 16:10

Leo Neo: There may be many reasons, but the obvious one stands out, that due to the more flexible “timetabling” which applies to a motorway, a new stretch might be useful without the country owning any more cars. In the case of a new railway line which has more capacity as one of its main justifications, it can only be usefully built if more trains are available.

The new trains, although directly paid for by ROSCOs (Rolling Stock Operating Companies) and leased to TOCs, will indirectly be paid for by a combination of fare-payers and tax-payers.

Of course, what is included in the “project cost” is ultimately an arbitrary decision. But if the trains were not included, the question of how much they cost would still be asked.

My read of HS2 is that it will benefit from suppressed demand, given that current north-south routes are increasingly filled with few cost-effective options for adding capacity. Unfortunately there is little hard data to support this.

Nonetheless this article series is not the place to discuss the viability or commercial basis of HS2 in its entirety. The scheme as substantial all-party support and appears to be proceeding. LBM

Malcolm
1 April 2016 at 16:19

WW: of course you are right that HS2 seems semi-detatched from the rest of the network. Its seperateness is mainly a result of the WCML upgrade fiasco, and fear of repeating the same in spades on the southern part of the line if that were to be enlarged. The decisions about station location do seem to have been rather fraught, but that is largely a matter of more openness. In the past, station locations were decided by railway companies with little or no consultation with anyone; and the same would have probably applied in the 1950s (decided by BR) if there had been any prospect then of expanding the system.

The separateness is not all bad though. It will provide some robustness.

ngh
1 April 2016 at 16:41

Re Leo Neo,

A rolling stock order of than size will effectively need some big government guarantees for the ROSCO who buy the trains then leases them to the TOC.

Graham H
1 April 2016 at 17:06

@ngh – but they won’t necessarily get any guarantee whatsoever (as they didn’t for the TLK build). If they did, then the capex would count immediately as public expenditure.

@Malcolm – robustness only for those flows that happen to blessed with both HS2 and classic services.

@LBM – Mr A Necdote (always an unreliable source) writes “whenever I travel by WC, unless I have the misfortune to travel on Friday afternoons, it seems to be conveying great quantities of fresh air.” Not much evidence of suppressed demand although a good try as a justification.

Dave Cardboard
1 April 2016 at 17:17

I’ve seen comments here and elsewhere from people who it seems suppose that HS2 will provide services “as well as” or “in competition with” existing WCML/ECML services. It usually goes along the lines of “HS2 is a white elephant because no-one is going to pay a price premium to use it and will use the cheaper existing services.”

But isn’t this a false dichotomy..? Once HS2 is operating, isn’t the plan to withdraw existing intercity services on WCML/ECML between destinations served by HS2 thereby freeing those WCML/ECML paths for “other” (stopping & freight) services. So the presumed “choice” between whether to take an HS2 service of not simply won’t exist.

For example, if I’m to travel (say) Manchester to London, I’ll rock up and catch “the train” from Piccadilly. It just happens to be a train that travels on the new line with shorter journey times. Unless I want to catch a “stopper” with who knows how many changes. Or fly, drive, coach, or not travel at all, etc.

Also, I’m sure I’ve seen the Secretary Of State state that HS2 won’t attract a price premium. Though I concede there’s plenty of (political) time before it opens for that to change.

Lords second reading is on on 14th April. Tune in to hear all the arguments rehearsed again..!

ngh
1 April 2016 at 17:45

Re Graham,

“Guarantees” don’t necessarily have to be direct or overtly financial. There are many ways DfT could lower the risk profile…

Re Dave,

The plan is effectively more stops at places like Milton Keynes Central so existing services become slower. Effectively a large increase in semi fast service patterns compared to today (which then provide some relief to stopping services)

Graham H
1 April 2016 at 19:02

@ngh – what had you in mind? {I can think of a very large number of banks – and the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund, of course – who might be quite interested.)

@Dave Cardboard – no, the only paths that are released are the non-stop Manchesters and non-stop Brums not extended to somewhere else. Everything else still needs all the links they have now *. Basically, you get the present WCML timetable in all its messiness with (some) added intermediate stops. Think of the new services as being an overlay to what’s there now. The constraint is, as ever, the approaches to Euston, so since you can’t – for obvious reasons – transfer a whole raft of services such as the Northamptons, they are still there. There’s a wide range of such existing claimants on paths into Euston.

__________________________________________________________________
*Unless you are one of the faction that says that the people of X (insert target town here) don’t deserve through services.

Malcolm
1 April 2016 at 19:56

Graham: The decisions about which towns get through services from London (and how many) have little to do with “deservingness” (as perceived by members of the public). It is a commercial decision by the operator unless (as is often the case) the operator is hamstrung by terms of the franchise. The only “factions” that come into it are operator and DfT. Neither are well-known for making universally popular decisions.

More relevantly to the thread, it is possible that one or other of those decision-making bodies will change things (perhaps even for valid reasons) when HS2 starts.

Graham H
1 April 2016 at 20:29

@Malcom – indeed. I was merely complaining about those -in this thread – who have suggested, for reasons of their own, which we may guess – that the inhabitants of X or Y (Holyhead, for some reason) should be singled out.I’m sure that over time and at the cost of immense political um, the list of through connexions will change. Lovers of irony and people who have long memories of political promises, will also recall that one of the selling points for the whole shooting match was that places that had not had any through services hitherto would now have them…

100andthirty
1 April 2016 at 20:43

With tongue very firmly in cheek, you wouldn’t need to add many more stops to the xx.43 ex Euston to make it “all stations”. In case you don’t know the xx.43 is alternately Glasgow or Edinburgh via Birmingham. Whilst this might be an extreme example, like others I see that most of the current WCML services might continue but with more stops.

For future capacity optimisation, I would all the rolling stock to have the same performance, high acceleration, at least 125mph capability and bigger/faster doors than any of the trains currently running (all are slow, all bar class 350 are too narrow).

The big question is whether tilt would be needed and whether a tilting train would have to comply with the restrictive Pendolino gauge now that Network Rail understands the gauge clearance on its routes. (Part of the reason for the excessively small Pendolinos was Railtrack’s inability to accurately identify a tilting gauge, so the supplier was forced to be very conservative on the principle that 1mm clearance is OK, but 1mm foul is certainly not OK)

Malcolm
1 April 2016 at 21:06

Graham: OK, granted there was one suggestion that Holyhead-Euston trains might be cut back to Crewe. As it happens, a decision about that would not just involve the “inhabitants of Holyhead” (all 11,431 of them), but people all along the north Wales coast and throughout Ireland, so perhaps “singling out” could be the wrong phrase. But I do take your point that a large fraction (if not all) of the through trains from Euston are likely to be still keenly desired. (Not quite the same thing as still being provided).

timbeau
1 April 2016 at 21:16

@Graham H
“the only paths that are released are the non-stop Manchesters and non-stop Brums not extended to somewhere else. Everything else still needs all the links they have now *. ”

This assumes that the somewhere else would justify the same level of service even if it were not still serving Manchester etc. Would, for example, Wolverhampton, get such a good service if it wasn’t such a convenient place for turning round the Birmingham services without clogging up New Street? Would Chesterfield get such a good service if it didn’t happen to be on the way to Sheffield?

@Dave Cardboard
” I’ve seen the Secretary Of State state that HS2 won’t attract a price premium. ”
If it becomes the only show in town, there is nothing over which it is charging a premium.
In Oysterland, at stations which have both NR and TfL services like Lewisham or Richmond or Balham, you pay a premium to use the NR service. But at Sidcup or Orpington or Purley or Chessington, you can’t say you’re paying a premium on NR because there is no lower priced service available.

Graham H
1 April 2016 at 21:51

@timbeau – viewed from planet Tharg you are probably right; viewed from here on earth, one tends to find those who already have something, even if only by an accident of geography, like to hang on to it and their politicians back them – Wimbledon Loop anyone? . It would be very easy, but not very informative to draw up a list of places that have through train services just because they are on the way to somewhere else and compare it with similar sized settlements which either don’t or have only a few because they are at the end of a branchline/line to nowhere. Both WCML and ECML are full of unplaces – Barrow, Bradford, Hull, Lincoln etc etc, compared with the Rugbys, and Yorks.

Old Buccaneer
1 April 2016 at 22:14

@Graham H @2151

I hesitate to disagree but:

I think your list of unplaces is a list of places off the main lines served by direct trains which absorb capacity which could otherwise be used for trains between main line termini.

@CXXX: for Lancaster, for example, the sensible thing for a London lass is to get a faster train to Preston & change, as prices and times are currently configured. According to my daughter at any rate (miss Anna Cdote).

On geography, it seems to me that “made” geography (transport links) is trumped by ‘natural’ geography (the Pennines).

Chris Richmond
1 April 2016 at 22:27

Was any thought given to making B’ham Curzon Street a major interchange? All lines east of New Street run immediately adjacent to the site and there is plenty of land to add a few more platforms. This would help regenerate the area, would free up New Street by spreading passengers between the two stations and would eliminate the isolation of the HS2 terminus…

timbeau
1 April 2016 at 22:35

@Graham H
Planet Tharg is about right – in this increasingly remote fastness we did have something, we lost it and the politicians have been totally ineffective in trying to get it back. We did once have a decent through service to London, as well as to other nodes which now require a change. Six years ago, the restoration of the London service after a fifteen year gap was supposed to be within the next year. Despite political pressure, the projected date has now recently slipped into the next decade, ten years late, and I have little confidence even that date will be honoured. All in the interests of ever more services whizzing up and down the main line, with fewer and fewer decent connections at the junction.

Walthamstow Writer
1 April 2016 at 22:51

@ Malcolm 1956 – surely the basic set of service requirements is always determined by the DfT? They set the minimum service levels and in some cases are much more prescriptive. Isn’t that the case with the WCML? There will be some scope for “commercial” initiatives for a train company but they can’t throw the basic requirements in the bin and just come up with something else. Their bid would be deemed non compliant. With HS2 the DfT will surely have to be very prescriptive as it tries to get the best out of the many billions of public money (ultimately it’s all public money) as quickly as possible and seeks to limit too much competition on the remaining network. And heaven knows where “open access” sits in all of this – either on HS2 or on the national network.

For all the imaginings about optimising train paths and getting more out of the network it’s going to take some very deft footwork and strategic thinking to get us from today’s railway through years of works with multiple impacts to an end state position with HS2 running and the ECML, MML, WCML and regional TOCs all suitably “adjusted”. There’s an awful lot of money, time and effort to be expended. One wonders if we are likely to see an outline plan as to how things will change or if it will be franchise by franchise.

Bel Eben
1 April 2016 at 23:30

(@Dave Cardboard:) “Once HS2 is operating, isn’t the plan to withdraw existing intercity services on WCML/ECML between destinations served by HS2 thereby freeing those WCML/ECML paths for “other” (stopping & freight) services. So the presumed “choice” between whether to take an HS2 service of not simply won’t exist.”

Compared to classic rail, the cost base of HS2 would be enormous, but the government has said ‘no premium fares’. So the subsidy levels would need to be very different. ‘Free’ (parity-of-subsidy) competition for big-city traffic between separate HS2 and West Coast operators could not happen, and would not be allowed. On HS1, there are ‘muted’ premium fares, but Southeastern high speed commuting is, no doubt, much more heavily subsidised than the company’s classic commuting.

(@timbeau:) “This assumes that the somewhere else would justify the same level of service even if it were not still serving Manchester etc. Would, for example, Wolverhampton, get such a good service if it wasn’t such a convenient place for turning round the Birmingham services without clogging up New Street?

Historically, Coventry has had a much more frequent service than Wolverhampton, by virtue of being on the London side of Birmingham. Extending more trains towards Wolverhampton increases the number of movements on the west side of New Street, and it’s hard to see how it helps with congestion on the east side.

timbeau
2 April 2016 at 06:49

@Bel Eben
“Extending more trains towards Wolverhampton increases the number of movements on the west side of New Street, and it’s hard to see how it helps with congestion on the east side.”

It doesn’t – but having trains lay over elsewhere eases the pressure on platform occupancy at New Street, which is the main constraint.

DPWH
2 April 2016 at 07:47

I think comparisons with other countries are valid. One of the reasons for the success in Spain is that the classic network was slow (cheaply-built through long distances of mountainous terrain), underinvested (it’s a Mediterranean country with a weak economy) and consequently pretty useless. The AVE network outcompetes the classic network because it is significantly better. Our British classic network is actually quite good, especially after the previous WCML upgrade, which raises the standard required for any next stage improvements.

One reason BR & even the new privatised wonderful, competitive ( oops, sorry about that …) railway got such an awful press 1980 – 2005 was that a lot of MP’s & opinion-formers believed that “the railways” were represented by services in Kent & Sussex, & it was the same everywhere else.

Malcolm
2 April 2016 at 08:18

Of course there is some point in making comparisons with other countries. (If only to avoid accusations of the “Not Invented Here” syndrome). But I think Graham’s point might have been better expressed in the form “comparisons with other countries may sometimes mislead” – for the reasons he gives. (I think Graham might even use the word “frequently” rather than “sometimes”, but I had better stop putting words in his keyboard – he has plenty of his own).

Graham H
2 April 2016 at 08:37

@DWPH – a careful reading of my post about the invidiousness of international comparisons would show that it was referring to demographics and economics. The structure of the French economy and its demographics is,for example,very different to that of Germany, and their approach to planning a high speed network reflects that. The UK demographics and economy are different again.

It is true though that on paper the network is better than people give it credit for. It’s just that it is too popular for its own good.

Walthamstow Writer
2 April 2016 at 12:39

@ Josh – far, far better that the system is too popular than being in decline. Of course success brings it owns challenges but there is at least some impetus and government support to improve and expand the infrastructure and services (including creating HS2). I think anyone can find issues with any TOC to criticise especially on commuter lines. Even the “sainted” London Overground is finding it harder going these days and people are much less forgiving. We also appear to have avoided, for the time being, another episode of structural change in the industry which has to be a good thing with so many large schemes to deliver.

Kate
2 April 2016 at 16:56

People have danced around the issue but it deserves laying out starkly. North of Crewe, the new trains will be slower than the Pendolinos they will replace. That has to be without precedent for a project of this scale.

Economisticas
2 April 2016 at 17:20

Puzzled about why certain people think there will be no change on the long-distance WCML trains. At the moment, the main purpose of the trains to Manchester/Liverpool is for end-to-end passengers, with the occasional stop en route. After HS2 is built, the main purpose of the long-distance trains that remain on the WCML will be picking up passengers at the intermediate stations and delivering them to London (or Manchester/Liverpool). The stopping pattern and timings of these trains will be redesigned for this new purpose, and this forms part of the benefit of benefit of building HS2.

Graham H
2 April 2016 at 20:56

@economistas – at the risk of repeating myself, to maintain the present level of connexions between these intermediate places and the termini and each other frees up very few paths. So, if a place A has three connexions/hr to place B. the effect cumulatively of maintaining these 3 links/hr is to maintain the existing path structure, more or less. To be sure some – repeat some – of the traffic will go on the end to end non-stop services but not all of it by any means. To be sure, some of these intermediate calls can be rationalised and strung together, but the price of that will be slower journeys – with the obvious objections.

@Kate – you will, of course, be hanged in the main square after your effigy has been vilified in every part of the land, but you will be right…

Malcolm
2 April 2016 at 22:02

Kate: this is no secret. The journey from London to Glasgow will still take less time when HS2 has been built, but it will not take as much less time as it might have done, if it had been economically possible to design and build high-speed tilting trains (*). There is nothing technically infeasible about the combination (as far as is known), but the trains would, it seems, have so little applicability beyond this particular route that their detailed design has not been started, and quite possibly never will be. (Let alone their production).

Of course different ways of looking at it exist, but I like the approach of seeing HS2 as a means of providing an extra pair of tracks northward from London, and one which happens to also provide secondary benefits of shorter journey times to some important destinations. The fact that one of these shorter journey times is not quite as short as some people might have thought it could be is then just an interesting side-issue.

(*) Technically, Pendolinos are already high-speed tilting trains, using one widespread definition of high-speed. But I meant high-speed-enough to fit into the intense service on the southern part of HS2, which Pendolinos are not.

peezedtee
2 April 2016 at 23:46

@Greg

One could go even further, and note that a good few national press hacks used to live in Kent, in places with direct trains to Blackfriars, the station for Fleet Street as was. Their unflattering generalisations about “the railways” were unduly influenced by their daily experiences in clapped-out Southern Region suburban EMUs.

Nowadays of course all journalists live in Islington, and never use mainline railways at all.

Kate
3 April 2016 at 01:09

Malcolm

That sails over the fact that Glasgow to Crewe, for example (or Glasgow to Liverpool etc which involve a change) will be slower journeys than before. Add to that that journeys from places south of Crewe to London are also likely to be slower (because it is expected that residual services on WCML will have more stops), and there are rather a lot of people whose journeys will be slower. (There are also places like Lancaster likely to lose their direct services to London entirely.)

So some passengers will enjoy faster journeys but a surprising number will be worse off. I’ve not seen figures published on how many journeys will be worse – no surprise there. Indeed, I wonder if the negative impact of that has been included in the BCR calculations or conveniently overlooked?

Indeed, when one stops to analyse that a bit more, almost all the winners will be traveling to/from London but many of the losers will be making journeys which don’t involve London. Again, that’s a point which the publicity seems to gloss over.

NotATrainspotter
3 April 2016 at 01:35

Kate, the difference in journey time between a Pendolino and an HS2 classic-compatible north of the WCML connection was said to go down to only seven minutes or so after minimal works. These timings are based off the HS2 reference train, which is an Alstom AGV, and it will accelerate much faster than a Pendolino will, so will be able to spend longer at linespeed.

The recent report into bringing the Scotland journey time under three hours outlines that the scope to bring down journey times further using traditional line upgrades (the WCRM applied all the way to the Clyde, so to speak) was very limited. After spending almost £20bn with all the disruption it would cause, it would only reduce journey times by 15 minutes, which is not enough to make it worth doing in the first place. The justification for the three hour mark is that this is when the train unquestionably starts to become faster than air for most travellers. The economic benefit and the increase in passenger numbers that come at this point is enough to justify spending many more billions of pounds to reach it. The report sets out the most efficient way to get journey times to this three hour mark and WCML upgrades make up only a very tiny part. Indeed, the only WCML upgrade suggested is reinstating the four tracks between Coppull (which would be made the end of HS2 Phase 2, rather than Golbourne 18.8km further south) and Euxton Junction. New high speed bypasses would be required for 2/3rds of the entire distance to the hypothetical E&G HSR line junction in Lanarkshire.

With regards to the post-HS2 service pattern on the WCML and other north-south mainlines it is important to remember that the current timetable is designed for the sake of the biggest and most profitable passenger flows. If the total effect of a timetable change is that profits increase, then that change will be made even if detrimental to some places along the line. Some places have an unusually good service today simply because they have to be served by other express services – Warrington Bank Quay is the most striking example as it has a non-stop service to London most of the day. However, WBQ itself does not justify this service, and if the rest of the timetable changes it will end up having a worse service. Once HS2 has removed the non-stop services from the WCML, there will be places which will see a slower direct service to London as a result. Wolverhampton, Coventry etc will have slightly slower services to London, but in return they will have far more capacity on those services. A slower service where seats will always be available and affordable is better than a fast service without any space for extra passengers.

As a consequence, it would also be impossible for HS2 to charge a special extra fare, as the classic line timetable will be designed to maximise capacity on other routes. For the country, the most efficient way to move people from Piccadilly to Euston is to put them on an HS2 service, since only by doing that will space be available for passengers at the stations where the Manchester ICWC service will call. The financial case for HS2 is not a strictly commercial one where ticket prices will pay back the cost of building the infrastructure. Instead, it is based on the economic uplift it will cause as it becomes possible for far more people to travel far more efficiently than they can at the moment.

[An interesting post, but rather long. Ideally when anyone (not just this contributor) has this much to say, we’d appreciate it being split into 2 or 3 posts). Malcolm]

alan bluemountains
3 April 2016 at 01:48

I can see that by 2030 when phase 2 of HS 2 is well underway constructionwise there will be several billion pounds spent on upgrading of the routes further north to Scotland to allow extensive running of conventional trains and classic HS 2 trains at 100 to 125 mph making tilting pendolinos (or new tilting trains) unnecessary to achieve high average speeds for the balance of the journey once off HS 2 tracks. Improving that part of the journey for ALL users. Sorry drifting off topic a bit.

rational plan
3 April 2016 at 05:10

There was a recent report released on upgrade options on routes to Scotland. Basically the west coast route came out the best. What they looked at was how best to upgrade it for speed and capacity. What the thought best would a series of rather long bypasses.

A full upgrade would provide a 2 and half hour journey time to Glasgow and Edinburgh, but quite a few billion less would still get you 3 hours.

DPWH
3 April 2016 at 05:44

The problem is that the WCML north of the Manchester region isn’t particularly straight, nor is it particularly level. It was built for slow speed steam hauled trains, on somewhat of a budget. With steam traction not being good on grades, Joseph Locke preferred to go the bendy way up, following the contours of the hills to minimise both civil engineering and the gradients involved. The gradients however were still pretty severe.

Of course, if you straighten the line between any two points where point B is higher than point A that reduces the distance travelled from A to B for the same height gained, thus increasing the grade, probably from 1-in-75 to beyond 1-in-stupid. The only real alternative therefore is to build a new line, probably with some hefty tunnelling, which might also have freight uses (the main problem is the northbound grade). A Swiss tunneller however would probably see is as a rather straightforward proposition.

Tilting 200 mph trains would probably be technically possible, and the non-tilting versions could be otherwise identical but without the tilting mechanism, making them somewhat standard and capable of later having the tilting mechanism removed if it’s unnecessary (or with a bit of electrification, tilting trains could be run north of the Central Belt), but this would add maintenance and procurement expense.

Again, retaining London-focus of the post is goes to show how this is a national project and how transport decisions that are London-focused have effects across the entire country.

100andthirty
3 April 2016 at 07:09

Gradients aren’t such a speed impediment as tight curves. LGV routes have pretty steep gradients. I recall seeing a paper which described how those routes made best use of the significantly high power installed on the trains to ‘storm up’ the hills and then to allow gravity to assist the trains down the hill with modest relaxation of the line speed limits.

Greg Tingey
3 April 2016 at 08:04

DPWH / rational plan
On the “other” side of the Pennines …
N of Newcastle, there are basically only two serious speed restrictions:
Morpeth ( & why that hasn’t been sorted is beyond me) & Cockburnspath, & sorting that would be expensive …..
But this is referring to “Not-from-London” starting/finishing points to the principa destinations in Scotland.
Very interesting, but is it relevant to HS2 in the London area?

100+30
Always excepting an ICE grinding up Liege bank, of course ….

Jonathan Roberts
3 April 2016 at 08:38

@early AM comments 3 April
The DfT Nov 2015 docs linked in the article show journey times (from London) to destinations including Glasgow. Also foreseen passenger demand to the mid 2030s. Look at Tables 54 and 55, in the ‘Demand & Capacity Pressures on WCML’ doc. HS2 Phase 1 makes Glasgow only just over a half-hour quicker overall, and it is known that Crewe-Glasgow will be slower than Pendo. Look too at the foreseen numbers travelling, not much of an absolute growth in demand for London-Glasgow by rail, fewer than 2m extra journeys per year (is this a two-way total?) from a 1+m base. OK there are other flows as well, but those aren’t set out.

Maybe indeed a tilting ‘classic compatible’ UK-gauge train could be devised – though itself at high development and construction cost. Meanwhile, forcing non-tilting HS trains back onto Shap and Beattock could actually make it harder in terms of line capacity to run a (faster than HS) Pendolino service between Glasgow/Edinburgh and the Northern cities and Birmingham!

DPWH is right, transport decisions that are London-focused can have effects across the entire country. In this case, HS2 is a Treasury-backed initiative to rebalance the national economy, but much of the scheme relies on relief of capacity pressures where London and Home Counties commuting is the greatest nexus (though not the only one).

Malcolm
3 April 2016 at 08:44

Kate says “ I’ve not seen figures published on how many journeys will be worse – no surprise there. ”

I’m not sure why you are unsurprised. There are some apparently well-funded lobbying groups opposed to HS2 – a simple search will find them – and I would have thought that such figures would be meat and drink to them.

Malcolm
3 April 2016 at 09:19

Regarding certain journey times being extended by HS2, it might be worth noting that the two obvious alternatives to building HS2 (doing nothing, or doing a drastic upgrade to the southern part of the WCML) would also make significant numbers of journeys take longer than they do at present.

ACL
3 April 2016 at 10:14

This is my first comment on this site, though I’ve been enjoying the well-informed debates on here for a few years. I follow discussions about HS2 here and elsewhere, but I’ve seen relatively little reference to the High Speed UK (http://www.highspeeduk.co.uk/) proposals, which to my non-transport specialist mind seem pretty compelling – linking not just a few major city centres, but providing reduced journey times between a much wider range of medium sized cities as well, and at potentially a reduced cost to the full HS2 proposals. They would of course have a very different impact on London, going through the WCML/ M1 corridors rather than via Old Oak Common.

Is anyone able to say why this is a wrong headed or impractical approach? My view is that we need to reduce journey times and increase inter connectivity across the national network, and HS2 only does that for a very limited number of journeys.

rational plan
3 April 2016 at 11:17

There have been many reasons that high speeds plans have been rubbished, but I wont go into here, there are plenty of knowledgeable on skyscrapercity who have gone into it.

rational plan
3 April 2016 at 11:22

@greg , going up the west coast is shorter and provides identical travel times to Edinburgh and Glasgow, going via Newcastle would-be much slower for Glasgow.and require expensive tunnels under Edinburgh.

Mark Townend
3 April 2016 at 12:09

@Jonathan Roberts, 3 April 2016 at 08:38“HS2 Phase 1 makes Glasgow only just over a half-hour quicker overall, and it is known that Crewe-Glasgow will be slower than Pendo. “

A 30+ minute improvement over today’s fastest to Glasgow is significant and a great achievement for a project that according to it’s detractors “only saves 20 minutes to Birmingham”. I assuming this includes the extension of HS construction from the Lichfield area to Crewe which should have a great impact for trains going north of Crewe. The figures suggest that loss of tilt north of Crewe doesn’t have a huge impact on Crewe-Glasgow. That may be because new trains, whilst not not being able to take full advantage of the enhanced tilt speed in places may be able to accelerate away again more quickly into straighter sections. For high speed operations and without the heavy tilt gear and stronger bogies required, they may have a higher power to weight ratio than the Pendolinos. That was certainly the case with Cross Country Voyagers, where despite being otherwise identical, the tilting versions were significantly heavier than the non-tilters, and on all but the very longest point to point non-stop journey segments accelerating this extra weight cost as much as was saved by the marginal top speed improvement achieved in a very small number of places by tilting. The decision to take Manchester-Glasgow out of the XC franchise was the main reason tilt was abandoned entirely on the XC network, but unfortunately the former tilt-fitted units still have to haul around the heavier bogies they were built with (an extra 10t per car!).

Pedantic of Purley
3 April 2016 at 12:29

Whilst discussions about journey time from London-Glasgow is just about tolerated, discussions about Crewe-Glasgow or Manchester-Glasgow are well beyond our remit.

Whilst on-topic comments are welcome and marginally off-topics at least tolerated and sometimes appreciated we have to draw a line if some of us moderators, and some avid followers, are not to spend a disproportional part of our lives reading comments that we may have no interest in.

As I keep saying, there are other websites available for you if you feel you must discuss this.

Graham H
3 April 2016 at 12:31

@ACL – we will all be snipped for discussing the benefits or otherwise of high speed per se, but, to keep the London focus topic and thread, there are two relevant issues here:

– it is far from clear that providing faster journey times to and from London won’t merely suck economic activity into the capital by making it easier to access the provinces from a base in the UK’s dominant market. The same effect can be cascaded down the hierarchy of settlements so that easier access to a market town tends to wipe out village shops and services. This is one reason why we have heard less recently about the economic benefits of HS2 – even the original study, which made heroic assumptions about the scale of mobile economic activity, admitted there would be losers (eg the SW side of the island) as well as winners. A parallel point might be made about housing and commuting, which is very relevant to this site.

– the historical argument for higher speeds has been that time spent travelling was unproductive so reducing travel time led to economic benefits. With the growth of mobile communications over the last 10-20 years, this assumption is plainly wrong in its simple form, and therefore the value of time saved is commensurately less. This is one of the other reasons that the original prospectus for HS2 and its claimed benefits has been written out of history and replaced with statements about the capacity released.

So,now we are faced with a project whose rationale is to release capacity. Whether it actually does so is what we are all struggling to understand. The conundrum is that the further you get away from the Midlands, the faster the costs of high speed travel begin to rack up, the smaller the populations are to be served, and the more the problem is the way capacity is used by freight. [Whether there are better ways of doing this is a secret concealed from moderators in my tin of Faeber=Castell Polychromos pencils whose cost so offended timbeau (and may be others); suffice to say the proposal you mention is one of many.]

Ian Sergeant
3 April 2016 at 12:35

I’m very interested in looking at the impact of HS2 Phase 2 on the ECML. It seems to me that all trains are going to end up stoppers with no semi-fasts, as a semi-fast from London to Leeds or York (and places north) is going to be so much quicker via HS2. I’ll take that on the chin for now as a regular Doncaster commuter, and I can see the benefits of the half-hourly Newark to Grantham service mentioned earlier.

But let’s look at the benefits. It can’t possibly be allowed that the fastest time to Doncaster from London off-peak be via a Hull Trains train, which isn’t allowed to stop at Peterborough and Newark. My opinions on half-size trains are well known, but is this going to mean the end of Hull Trains?

Graham H
3 April 2016 at 13:25

@Ian Sergeant -you have to hope that, as with WCML, DfT wants to retain the existing levels of connectivity between intermediate stations. [Or, on the other hand, they may not admit to the problem – my spy tells me that DfT are now trying to suppress the post-HS2 legacy timetable for WCML as being too subversive.]

DPWH
3 April 2016 at 13:40

@Ian Sgt, The other curious thing about the ECML is Nottingham. Trains currently go via the MML because of the balance of capacity on the MML v ECML. This is despite the ex-Great Northern route being somewhat more direct and quicker, while Grantham acts as somewhat of a “Nottingham Parkway” station. Could increased ECML capacity mean ECML trains to Nottingham?

alan bluemountains
3 April 2016 at 13:52

Jonathan Roberts I probably expressed myself poorly, I certainly do not expect a full high speed line across Scotland for a couple of billion pounds, I was addressing the question of a time penalty (10 minute ?) due to lack of tilt after the end of HS 2 line reached. Fixing problems / bypassing Preston and upgrading to 100 to 125 mph where economically feasible to the border was what I was thinking. I sure that there are also pinch points over the border where raising line speed from 30 mph to 50 mph would give additional time savings for affordable costs and which could be tackled using any residual funds or as funds became available. Any new high speed line these days would, I suspect be at least 140 mph capable.

Kate
3 April 2016 at 14:23

Shap and Beattock Summits are a major source of delays on WCML and will remain unchanged even after phases 1 and 2. If HS2 runs a full timetable (which is probably economically necessary), resilience will be poor and HS2 might suffer from many (not all) of the reliability problems which have always plagued WCML.

Once London to Scotland services are migrated to HS2, services on the old WCML might become more reliable.

Since the summits affect northbound services more than southbound services, resilience could be improved by stabling spare train sets in Scotland.

Malcolm
3 April 2016 at 14:31

ACL: along with banning posts here deemed “crayonistic”, we also try to ignore, as far as possible, similar activities elsewhere in cyberland. There was some slight discussion on a different thread about HSUK (also read the next few comments): we probably need not amplify or repeat the discussion here.

(In spite of this, thanks for your first comment; please do not be excessively put off!)

Kate
3 April 2016 at 14:32

There’s another reputational problem looming.

The WCML upgrade was hugely disruptive. Work to extend HS2 to Scotland is likely to have the same sort of impact, especially if a western corridor is chosen. Passengers won’t see that as a WCML or ECML problem, but as a problem with the shiny new HS2. That will be wrong and unfair, but all passengers will see is disrupted high speed services.

Malcolm
3 April 2016 at 14:48

Kate: “Looming” is a strange word to use about something that could not happen before 2027 at the very earliest.

Kate
3 April 2016 at 14:54

(Malcolm asked for longer comments to be split so I have. Parts 1 and 2 are above.)

So:

1 Running London to Scotland services on HS2 might transfer many of the WCML reliability issues to HS2.

2 Sorting out the causes of poor reliability north of Crewe might be disruptive for HS2.

A late change of plan might be needed which sees WCML London to Glasgow services remaining on the old WCML through Rugby even after HS2 phase 2 opens. Using some of the freed up paths and Pendolinos, the frequency could be increased and, with more services being run, different services could skip different intermediate stations to improve journey times. Or one service an hour could run London – Crewe – Glasgow stopping only to integrate with other WCML and HS services at Crewe.

Pendolinos are faster north of Crewe than the new HS trains (see my earlier comment). Heavy Pendolinos are slow accelerators (see earlier comments from others) so being able almost non-stop to Glasgow would save time too. A residual WCML built around minimising London to Glasgow journey time might come very close to being as fast as using HS2 but would isolate HS2 from some if the miseries of the WCML north of Crewe.

Kate
3 April 2016 at 15:21

On fares, I assume that the commitment to the same fares on HS2 as on classic services refers only to regulated fares IE full price tickets and season tickets.

35.6 mins saved London to Crewe and only 12.1 saved London to Glasgow (which is why I think retaining Pendolinos to Glasgow with an optimised timetable can match an HS2 route). That suggests the penalty north of Crewe from not using Pendolinos is about 23.5mins.

Actually with the correct timetabling, a further 13.5 minutes can be removed from the headline phase 2 London to Glasgow time if one assumes London to Crewe by HS2 with a change to a Pendolino (allow 10 minutes) for the Crewe to Glasgow leg. With the correct station layout at Crewe, those connections could be cross-platform.

Ianno
3 April 2016 at 16:41

Kate (the 1432 version7)

Difference is, one would “only” be disrupting around 3-4 HS2 services per hour (those north of Preston); not all 16-18tph into Euston.

Plus HS2 trains still have the option of being sent via the eastern leg of the ‘Y’ and Newcastle, giving a comparable-ish journey time to Edinburgh (admittedly longer for Glaswegians). A good number of people won’t even notice the disruption, provided they still board and alight the same type of trains at the same stations…

Jonathan Roberts
3 April 2016 at 16:51

@Kate
Crewe might well be where you could ‘plug in’ the Northern Powerhouse (it surely needs to be plugged in somewhere) and Scotland, into the Southern distribution system – with Scottish and Southern Energy no doubt maintaining HS2’s power supply!

If I were cynical, I might also note that getting HS2 as far as Crewe gains you most of the London-NW time benefits without all the costs of the last (largely urban, extensively tunnelled) leg into Manchester, which itself is useful for only a proportion of the total London-NW trains. Might Crewe be an optimum point to stop the NW leg, in terms of project costs vs VfM , at least for some years, while you reviewed how to join up HS2 with HS3? – if they are to be joined up (HS2 and HS1 aren’t).

However then back to the London & Home Counties’ capacity issue, in the context of you re-inventing Anglo-Scottish trains via the WCML. The more you seek to re-occupy the WCML with trains which are similar to or the same as now in timings, or maybe even faster, the less the net capacity gain from HS2…

Bel Eben
3 April 2016 at 17:03

(@NotATrainspotter:) “Kate, the difference in journey time between a Pendolino and an HS2 classic-compatible north of the WCML connection was said to go down to only seven minutes or so after minimal works. “

‘North of the WCML connection, after minimal works, a new-build non-tilting train is only a few minutes slower than a tilting one.’ Presumably, then, a new-build non-tilting train, such as a 715-seat 10-car IEP, would only be a few minutes slower on West Coast between London and Manchester, or London and Birmingham, than a 589-seat Pendolino.

(@NotATrainspotter:) “The recent report into bringing the Scotland journey time under three hours outlines that the scope to bring down journey times further using traditional line upgrades (the WCRM applied all the way to the Clyde, so to speak) was very limited. After spending almost £20bn with all the disruption it would cause, it would only reduce journey times by 15 minutes, which is not enough to make it worth doing in the first place. The justification for the three hour mark is that this is when the train unquestionably starts to become faster than air for most travellers.”

According to the Atkins Milestone 7 report, “The impact of [a north south high speed line] on air demand is relatively modest, forecast to reduce overall UK domestic point-to-point air travel by up to 7%.”

[Snipped for length and digression into the validity of HS2, which is off topic. LBM]

(@NotATrainspotter:) “With regards to the post-HS2 service pattern on the WCML and other north-south mainlines it is important to remember that the current timetable is designed for the sake of the biggest and most profitable passenger flows.” If the total effect of a timetable change is that profits increase, then that change will be made even if detrimental to some places along the line.”

Inter-city West Coast receives net subsidy (network grant), so it is unhelpful to describe its passenger flows as “profitable”. The service level and pattern is ultimately determined by government decision.

(@NotATrainspotter:) “Once HS2 has removed the non-stop services from the WCML, there will be places which will see a slower direct service to London as a result. Wolverhampton, Coventry etc will have slightly slower services to London, but in return they will have far more capacity on those services. A slower service where seats will always be available and affordable is better than a fast service without any space for extra passengers.”

According to the Prof McNaughton slides, classic capacity between Manchester and London, and Birmingham and London, would go down, not up.

[Snipped for length and digression into alternatives to HS2, which is off topic. LBM]

Graham H
3 April 2016 at 17:07

@Jonathan Roberts – the Treasury would be pleased with that argument… I doubt I shall live so long,otherwise,I would take a bet that we shall hear it again when Phase 2 is up for decision.

ngh
3 April 2016 at 17:28

Train performance on Northern WCML.
The limiting factor is often not curvature and the ability to tilt or not* but the effect of gradient on (emergency) braking…
The speed limit is 20mph lower going down Shap /Beattock etc. than going up on the adjacent track, the reason for this is the requirement to be able to stop within the required signalling distances with only friction brakes functioning.

What could be done to improve this in the future?
1. Not fit tilt (much more beneficial on Southern WCML) to reduce train weight (the tilt mechanism weight on an 11car Pendolino is equivalent to the weight of the 2 cars (1 motor 1 trailer) added to extend them from 9 to 11 cars a few years ago!).
The size of the tilt mechanism and the traction motors restricts the bogies on the 390s to 1 traction motor per bogie. (14 powered axles out of 44 on an 11 car). Reducing weight would also allow a reduction in the number of traction motors to provide the same performance and fitting more brake rotors instead would improve braking performance.

2. ETCS to allow more flexible block lengths with out reducing capacity.

Therefore I suspect the best post HS2 solution may not be tilt and the eventual replacements for the pendolinos may not have tilt if they have a more semi fast service pattern.

* A Virgin 390 is only 7 minutes faster from Preston to Glasgow than a Transpennine 350/4 with the same stopping pattern (83 vs 90 minutes)!

Melvyn
3 April 2016 at 18:12

Those who argue that HS2 should not run into London or Manchester are forgetting the fact that HS2 is being built to the larger continental gauge and thus full size trains won’t fit onto existing network.

Building high speed lines on the continent that don’t reach city centres is possible simply because historic network is already built to larger gauge.

In fact the recent report into extending HS2 beyond stage 2 mentioned that new sections would be built to larger gauge and thus sections could be joined together to eventually provide a full through route.

Of course HS2 is is a misnomer as it really is WCML2 with stage 2 having elements of MML2 and ECML2 and reason for building it is same as for original TGV Sud-Est and that is need to provide extra capacity on a route running at near capacity. Speed it the side benefit of building from a clean sheet using modern techniques just like Brunel did with his new GWR with trains running at unheard of speeds of 50 mph!

Anomnibus
3 April 2016 at 18:47

HS2 Phase 1 is a two-track bypass for the West Coast Main Line for fast trains, with only four stations on it. It is to be constructed through easy geography, and has been sold to the taxpayer at a knee-tremblingly high mark-up.

It is, by any definition, not “value for money”, but [Off-topic and whimsy snipped. Malcolm]

But none of the other options are worth the money either, including the “Do Nothing” option. Politics is the art of the possible. By definition, perfection isn’t possible, so HS2 isn’t perfect. It’s not the best solution available, but the most possible solution.

[Further snip]

Melvyn
3 April 2016 at 18:49

The problem of arguing time savings HS2 will provide at a future date is the fact that existing network is undergoing constant upgrade . In fact over Easter work was completed on a major project in Staffordshire which removed a flat junction and included building several miles of new railway. One irony was local councils /MPs who praised this scheme who then talked of HS2 destroying countryside when HS2 will be no different when built!

While Virgin who now run ECML want to run new inter city trains at their full 140mph /225kph somethings the IC225s were meant to do but upgrades were not made. However, ECML has problems like level crossings that will need to be removed before this becomes possible.

As for talk about HS2 being London centric this misses the fact that in England Canals, historic rail network and even motorways are more centred on Birmingham and HS rail will be similar with London being just one arm once stage 2 of HS2 and projects like HS3 are built.

Given the location of Old Oak Common Station next to the GWR it raises questions as to whether GWR should also be linked in HS2 for the recent report was about Scotland but nothing was said about better connections to Wales and the west of England.

Malcolm
3 April 2016 at 18:51

Melvyn: The full-size build of HS2 does not require the use of full-size trains, it merely permits it. Current plans are to procure part of the fleet as so-called captive trains (full-size therefore unable to run on any relevant existing line). But if this does not happen and all trains are compatible-sized (as is being suggested), then it indeed would be possible to use existing tracks into cities (temporarily or permanently).

Rational Plan
3 April 2016 at 18:58

HS2 needs to run into central London, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, because the existing lines and platforms are full, there is no point adding a new track between them if the actually can’t fit more trains into their main target markets.

@Graham H, I would not put too much stock in the idea that new infrastructure does not boost growth or ends up sucking it all up into a larger centre. Firstly there are conflicting studies on the benefits of infrastructure and growth.

The second point is that in studies on the effect on high speed lines in France it depends if the respective cities took advantage of the new opportunities that was provided, from local transport improvements to large scale property redevelopment near the new stations and pro business policies etc. Some cities flourished and others did not.

Considering the rents and wage levels in London I can not see businesses relocating to London in a sudden rush. It is much more likely that Northern business will find it easier to do business in London with the large corporates based there.

Large London businesses are already setting up bases in Leeds and Manchester to take advantage of lower professional fees in those cities. The property business already has a term for it ‘Northshoring’

[Overseas call centres and overly long comment snipped. LBM]

Kate
3 April 2016 at 19:05

Jonathan

Glasgow (and Holyhead) is best served from London by Pendolinos for the reason I have given above (equal journey time using the older assets) with timetabled changes at Crewe for even faster journeys with a change.

HS2 can then serve more destinations in Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire and the Midlands or more services on the northern reaches of ECML. WCML is a precious 125mph railway and should continue to be used for limited stop Intercity services.

100andthirty
3 April 2016 at 19:40

Thinking of HS2 as the 3rd pair of tracks on the WCML (with a rather large 10′ space,) it will be possible to timetable fast medium and slow trains on each pair of lines. HS2 is intended to create more capacity, and, paraphrasing Andrew McNaughton, the HS2 techincal director, if you’re going to build a new line, you might as well build it high speed. North of Crewe, however, its a conventional 2 track mixed traffic railway, and whilst we have enjoyed debating the journey times of Pendolinos, class 350s, non tilting HS trains and so on we forget the elephant in the room, freight! At a recent presentation about the forthcoming class 88 locos, the journey times reduction attributed to these because of improved power to weight ratio was in the order of 30 mins compared with some of the current traction. If work is done therefore to deal with the issues we have all raised (curves – straighten them, gradients – sort out the signalling etc, and performance -install enough ooomph) it will also be necessary to have ample freight loops.

the Treasury would be pleased with that argument… [don’t bother with high speed for the last few miles into Manchester as it will not offer value for money]

Well, I can’t see it going down well with the person heading the treasury – the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The trouble is if you do that you kill off the “we are really doing it all for you up norf – especially you wonderful people of Manchester who will be at the heart of the Northern Powerhouse”.

NotATrainspotter
3 April 2016 at 19:52

Kate, the Phase 2 timing to Glasgow is 3hr38, almost an hour faster than the current timing using a Pendolino running non-stop south of Warrington. This timing will be possible day in, day out without breaking a sweat or causing problems for other services on HS2 and the southern WCML. The only possible way that a Pendolino could even begin to match that time is by running non-stop from Glasgow to London and causing huge problems for the rest of the WCML services.

The reason that the Tube network can run at extremely high frequencies compared to the rail network is that every service has the same calling pattern. No train ever needs to try to overtake the one ahead, so at all times the separation between the two can be minimal. The way to maximise capacity on the rest of the rail network is to do the same thing, and HS2 makes it possible to standardise the service pattern on the WCML fast and slow lines. The remaining WCML services to Birmingham, Manchester etc will have approximately the same average speed as the fast outer commuter services running on the fast lines, as they will all stop at the major stations like Milton Keynes and Rugby. At the moment, the Glasgow expresses have the fastest average speed on the WCML since they run non-stop, so they will catch up with any other train ahead of them.

Even if the Pendolinos could match the Phase 2 timings they would be stretched to their limit while doing so. There would be no way to make them any faster than that, whereas with HS2 speeding up services to Glasgow is just a matter of building more new track. Yes, that track would be expensive, but it needn’t be built all at once. The HS2 Ltd Scotland report sets out a phasing strategy for constructing the bypasses based upon what sections would deliver the best value for money. One of the major factors in the value for money is the capacity relief that section would provide for the WCML, as there are serious problems where the fast express services have to share a twin-track railway with freight services. The most effective way of providing extra capacity in these areas would be to build new high speed bypasses away from the existing railway, as the WCML north of Preston was never a four-track railway.

Jonathan Roberts
3 April 2016 at 20:10

@PoP
Funnily enough there are other ways (or even extra ways if you want to be really beneficent) of getting HS2 to Manchester, which I hinted at – by joining up with HS3 – might mean Man.Vic. and access to deprived northern ex-mills towns, Huddersfield etc, rather than Piccadilly… However I’m trying not to start to plan the Northern Powerhouse network (a moderator risk!), so merely observe that there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Treasury spending on one conjoined HS way to and through Manchester might be better than ending up having to duplicate HS costs.

ML
3 April 2016 at 20:18

Kate – in that table in the Guardian, I think you are confusing minutes saved with % of time saved (12% saved of time to Glasgow is more minutes than 12% saved of time to Crewe). To be fair, the Guardian was trying to muddle things to make a (typical Manchester Guardian) point that it is the S rather than the N that gains most from HS2..

Bel Eben
3 April 2016 at 20:40

(100andthirty:) “Thinking of HS2 as the 3rd pair of tracks on the WCML (with a rather large 10′ space,) it will be possible to timetable fast medium and slow trains on each pair of lines.”

Thinking of HS2 as the 3rd pair of tracks on the WCML is a bit of stretch, because there are rather more than two intermediate stations between Manchester and London on the existing pairs of tracks.

One would also need to define exactly what “fast medium and slow trains” actually meant, and how that additional capacity was of practical use.

For example, is a 75mph WCML freight train “fast”? If it is, it probably stops being “fast” when it comes off the WCML, and starts to wreak capacity havoc on the North London Line, or whatever.

(100andthirty:) “HS2 is intended to create more capacity, and, paraphrasing Andrew McNaughton, the HS2 techincal director, if you’re going to build a new line, you might as well build it high speed. “

The trouble with building a new high speed line, serving few localities, is you have to keep running parallel classic trains to serve the intermediate places.

So, two lots of big subsidy, replacing one lot of smaller subsidy. Give the length of the commitment, it’s a difficult question for the public finances.

Kate
3 April 2016 at 20:59

ML thanks for clearing that up

Alan Griffiths
3 April 2016 at 21:03

Bel Eben 3 April 2016 at 20:40

“more than two intermediate stations between Manchester and London on the existing pairs of tracks.”

That’s true, but 3 trains an hour each way stop at only 3 of those stations.

I can name ’em if necessary.

Alan Griffiths
3 April 2016 at 21:08

NotATrainspotter 3 April 2016 at 19:52

” The most effective way of providing extra capacity in these areas would be to build new high speed bypasses away from the existing railway, ”

I do think 2/3 of HS2 is really an extra pair of tracks for WCML. Like any express line it skips stations. It’s why I think as much care (and transparency) should apply to the existing fast lines. If they essentially are downgraded to 75mph because of freight or services with very frequent stops, that would not be good value for money. I would far rather be moving services off MML onto HS2 and running more freight down MML. The details don’t matter though, it is the principle that HS2 isn’t just about fast trains but is about changing the pattern of northbound long-distance services from London (and vv to London).

ACL
3 April 2016 at 21:16

Thanks @Graham H, @Malcolm and @rational plan for the signposting. Interesting to read others’ comments on different high speed rail models, though will try to focus comments to London in future!

100andthirty
3 April 2016 at 21:23

Bel Eban….Indeed, there are proposed to be few stations on the 3rd pair of tracks, this carries on the principle of separating fast and slow trains used on the extisting 4 tracks. Whilst there are platforms on all four pairs of tracks at most of the southern WCML stations, trains running on the fast lines are only usually timetabled to stop at Watford, Milton Keynes, and/or Rugby, and then usually not at all of them on any given service. There is also a rule (quite how firm it is I don’t know) that only trains capable of more than 100mph are normally allowed on the fast lines (as far as I recall, this was to have been “all trains to be 125mph capable” until London Midland and Siemens came up with the 110mph class 350/1 – and now 350/3).

You are so right when you mention the difficulty of categorising a particular type of train. Clearly, your example of the 75 mph freight is not a fast train…. it would severely restrict thoughput of 110mph and 125mph trains. However an all stations Tring train would get in the way of the freight, such is the challenge of mixed traffic lines. However, don’t just take top speed, it’s point to point run times that matter and freight not only has a lower top speeed than most passenger trains but would also have much lower acceleration and somewhat lower brake rates all of which extend freight run times (also low speed turnouts into freight holding loops don’t help!)

[Minor edit by Malcolm. 8 tracks would be nice, but…]

Bel Eben
3 April 2016 at 22:18

(NotATrainspotter:) “The reason that the Tube network can run at extremely high frequencies compared to the rail network is that every service has the same calling pattern. No train ever needs to try to overtake the one ahead, so at all times the separation between the two can be minimal. The way to maximise capacity on the rest of the rail network is to do the same thing, and HS2 makes it possible to standardise the service pattern on the WCML fast and slow lines.”

The difference between providing extra capacity on the Underground compared to the WCML is the existence of a market for the former. In the off-peak, many WCML paths go unused.

According to Prof McNaughton’s Slide 13, HS2 would not result in a standardisation of the service pattern on the WCML fast and slow lines, nor much in the way of an intensification in their use.

Bel Eben: There is a difference between what HS2 “makes possible” (in NotATrainspotter’s words) and what was presented to parliament as an “Indicative Service Pattern”. Time will tell whether the not-much-changed pattern or a rather-more-standardised one actually happens. My guess is that it will be something of a compromise between the two.

AlisonW
3 April 2016 at 23:58

[Most of this comment could be snipped for various reasons, but as the contributor has volunteered (see below) to “put her coat on”, I am not bothering. Though another mod may well override me and snip or scrap entirely. But if this comment should survive, would others please avoid the same digressions and rather impractical suggestions. This is not meant to be a brainstorming session. Malcolm]

For “High Speed” shouldn’t we really be saying “Non-stop”, or “Limited stop” north of B’ham? Yes, there is a desire to generate modal transfer from plane and car, but is that enough? I note we are banned from arguing whether HS2 is a “good thing” — and I believe it is — but as a _transport project_ rather than a financial activity. Though it should employ a few people (and use some British steel).

If you demand an intermediate station (or two) on the south-of-Brum part of HS2 then you’d need very long parallel lines to permit full-speed access off and on to the main line. I don’t see the business case as strong enough, personally, especially as Graham H has already mentioned the high costs of maintaining high speed switches. Sticking a massive ‘New Town’ around the middle of the stage 1 line though would work wonders for the BCR and passenger generation.

All this argument about northern Pendolinos suggests a cross-platform transfer station should be added at the northern end of HS2 instead of through services! (Maybe not)

So far as London-centric attitudes to the construction of _any_ HS lines, given that their addition to the options for travel into within the M25 will always reduce the volume of pax squeezing onto the existing very overcrowded services by removing the long(er)-distance passengers will always help.

Now if you _really_ wanted to reduce the pax overflow likely at Euston just divert HS2 at OOC along the Liz Line, via Abbey Wood to Ebbsfleet. Or maybe not … (OK, I’m already putting my coat on until part two.)

Anonymous
4 April 2016 at 11:58

That long London tunnel: I’ve seen the reasons given variously as the problem of getting catenary under the Hanger Lane gyratory without raising it (well, lower the track bed) and the noise issue (but as someone’s already said, the Central Line is already running along this stretch, just add noise fences). I believe that with its current design HS2 is coming in at 9 times the cost of a French TGV line – while the national ambulance service has faced heavy cutbacks (average waiting time in my city 2 hours) and social benefits are also facing more cutbacks. Isn’t it time that we revisited the Ove Arrup option over an HS2 based on rebuild, electification and some bypasses for GW NNML – which at the time came in at only £6bn? It wouldn’t be quite as quick – 140 mph, but that’s same speed as HS1. Let’s remember that the main issue with the WCML (and ECML, thinking of Leeds) is not speed – London-Manchester in 2 hrs 7 is pretty good – the issue is capacity. Ove Arrup’s proposal would do all that.

Jonathan Roberts
4 April 2016 at 13:05

@Anonymous 4/4 11:58
Apparently when HS2 Ltd applied its design criteria to the NNML, it required rebuilding Hanger Lane gyratory, which became a logistical nightmare. It is argued by others that that could have been avoided by just refurbishing the alignment to new clearances. However things have now moved on. While there are still huge localised concerns about HS2, for example in the Euston and Camden area (more on that in a later Part), the strategic issues are now construction logistics and financing the railway. Royal Assent for Phase 1 is expected at the end of 2016 or spring 2017. Putting HS2 Phase 1 back by 5-7 years for a fundamental rethink of its main line through NW London and the Chilterns wouldn’t be very realistic when set against the current Government’s priorities.

RayK
4 April 2016 at 15:48

@NotATrainspotter 3 April at 19:52
‘. . .there are serious problems where the fast express services have to share a twin-track railway with freight services. The most effective way of providing extra capacity in these areas would be to build new high speed bypasses away from the existing railway,. . .’
That’s only one option. Another, which is referred to in the North and Scottish report as appropriate in some places is to provide extra track for the freight. This is often less expensive. The drawback to doing this is that the reduced timings for passenger traffic are less shiny than politicians prefer.

Anomnibus
4 April 2016 at 18:28

@Alan Griffiths:

The “Y” shape is also a lesson picked up from the Italian network, which has to contend with difficult, but relatively sparsely populated terrain between two more populous, but more easily accessible coasts. I suspect HS3 will be needed to make that “Northern Hub” concept truly viable. I don’t think HS2 alone will be sufficient.

[Off topic parts snipped. LBM]

Chris
6 April 2016 at 13:18

The GCR was built to a smallish continental-sized loading gauge.

This is an *urban myth*, it was built to a relatively generous loading gauge for this country but it didn’t allow anything that couldn’t be accommodated on the earlier parts of the GCR network – ‘Berne’ gauge had yet to be agreed for which it was substandard anyway, as were the lines across Kent and IIRC northern France too – it would have been an entirely pointless exercise.

Here is it clear that in the 1890s the prevailing go-anywhere gauge was the standard French loading gauge, which was the smallest in mainland Europe as to both width and height (and itself was British in origin because engineers like Brassey built early French main lines). A larger minimum size wasn’t agreed until the Berne conference of 1913. So the GCR has a ‘smallish continental-sized loading gauge’.

AlisonW
7 April 2016 at 21:49

While I remember … re Melvyn’s: “While Virgin who now run ECML…” needs to be corrected. Virgin only have 10% of the JV, Stagecoach have the 90% share.

“Branding”, huh 😛

Walthamstow Writer
7 April 2016 at 22:34

@ Alison W – or as I saw it explained the other day – “Virgin do all the fancy marketing and we (Stagecoach) empty the toilets”. 😉

Ian J
8 April 2016 at 03:24

@Jonathan Roberts: But is there any actual contemporary evidence that the Great Central Railway was constructed to one of those French gauges? There is a loading gauge diagram for the Great Central’s London Extension on p. 27 here showing a loading gauge height of 13ft 4.5 inches (4.07 m) and a maximum width of 9 ft 3 inches (2.81m).

Compare with the Berne loading gauge width of 3.15 m wide and by 4.28 m high, or indeed other British gauges (eg W6A at 2.82m wide, much the same width as the Great Central), and I’m starting to suspect that the idea that the Great Central railway was built to a Continental loading gauge, while much repeated, doesn’t have much foundation.

Ian J
8 April 2016 at 05:14

Interestingly, if you look at the Talk page of the Wikipedia article on the Great Central Main Line, you will see people pointing out that the primary sources don’t support the claim that it was built to a continental gauge, and providing (here) a copy of the gauge diagram as issued to the contractors by the GCR, with the chief engineers signature on it.

Wikpedia editors respond that that doesn’t matter because a lot of books have repeated the claim and that is what matters for Wikipedia. There are also suggestions on there that the whole Manchester-to-Paris via the Channel Tunnel thing is a myth too.

Graham H
8 April 2016 at 08:08

@IanJ – that says as much about Wikipaedia’s accuracy as about the actual gauge issue, alas! 🙂 🙁

Jonathan Roberts
8 April 2016 at 09:00

@IanJ
A fair query – I would be interested to see the 1890s Nord Railway loading gauge compared to the GCR London extension loading gauge. [Well before the Berne gauge was invented, of course – any Berne numbers are irrelevant.] Watkin was chairman of the Nord, so should have had an interest in maximising the utility of the GCR extension for continental goods and passenger traffic.

Greg Tingey
8 April 2016 at 09:16

Historical note …
The GCR largely & the GNR & surprisingly the GER, & also the NER had largish gauges, but others were noticeably smaller, so that in the famous 1925 exchanges, to supposedly get locomotives from Kings Cross to Paddington ( & vice versa) locos had to use the GCR/GWR connections via Banbury as using the LMS ( ex NLR ) intra-London direct connections would have resulted in “scrapings”.
See also the cut-down on the Gresley pacifics after the Grouping, to fit the ex-NBR gauge.
In fact, it was the SECR & the NBR that (generally) had tight gauges, thus affecting everyone, after 1923, as well as surprising restrictions on the MR & LNWR, though not as tight on the other lines mentioned ….

Philip
8 April 2016 at 10:16

It’s been an issue in several cases involving (non-transport) history on Wikipedia – new research in primary sources has convinced all the actual historians working on a subject that the previous consensus was wrong, but Wikipedia policy is not to change until “authoritative secondary sources” change to reflect the new consensus.

Graham H
8 April 2016 at 10:51

@Philip – a bit off topic to prolong this, but my academic training (admittedly as a historian) was firmly rooted in the belief that new primary sources or new research into them would immediately form the current platform for discussing a topic. I hadn’t realised Wikipaedia had such a disreputable approach.

peezedtee
8 April 2016 at 23:03

@Graham H
It’s most unfair to describe Wikipedia’s policy on “reliable sources” as “disreputable”. The policy on a changing consensus is cautious and conservative, rightly in my view. Secondary sources are more important than primary sources. This means that facts have to have been published in a respectable place before they can be asserted as fact. Editors are always at pains to point out that Wikipedia is not itself a “reliable source”. A lot of effort and discussion has clearly gone into this. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources
Wikipedia is a collaborative voluntary effort, and people who think they could form a better policy on sources should put their suggestions forward, not just slag off the project with silly insults like “disreputable”.

Ian J
9 April 2016 at 04:15

@Jonathan Roberts: I would turn the question around: is there any evidence at all pre-dating 1965 at all that the Great Central railway either adopted a continental loading gauge or that Edward Waktkins intended to run through trains from Manchester to Paris via the Channel Tunnel. I say 1965 because that seems to be when a well-intentioned activist, Roger Calvert, invented these stories which have been repeated ever since.

@PZT: I will just point out that the three (!) sources cited for Wikipedia’s statement about the Great Central loading gauge are a) a book about the Flying Scotsman, which never used the route, b) a humorous travelogue, and c) a book of railway ghost stories. Perhaps one day a link to this article will be added to give even more weight to the assertion. It won’t make it any more right. Which is not a problem in Wikipedia’s terms, since verifiability trumps truth under Wikipedia policy (and that is probably the only way the project could work), but does lead to two thoughts:

1) Wikipedia has systematic biases in favour of things enthusiasts (on any subject) like to believe, and nuggets of “information” which are searchable on Google Books

2) Anyone who says that reopening the Great Central would be a viable alternative to HS2 on the grounds that it “was built to European gauge” doesn’t know what they are talking about and can safely be ignored.

Greg Tingey
9 April 2016 at 08:31

Ian J
Err … Gresley A-3’s regularly used the ex-GCR main line, but, of course, they would have been the later versions, with the LNER composite gauge.

timbeau
9 April 2016 at 10:48

@Ian/Greg

And the usual confusion between “Flying Scotsman” (LNER No 4472/BR No 60103) which may well have put in an appearance on the GCR route at some time in its history, and the Flying Scotsman (the 10 o’clock from Kings Cross), which is unlikely to have ever done so. The cited book does not make the distinction clear, although it is primarily about the former

Malcolm
9 April 2016 at 11:33

Ian J says “verifiability trumps truth under Wikipedia policy”. Verifiability is verifiable! Whereas arguably, in historical matters, there is no such thing as truth. Did the Duke of Gloucester murder the Princes? Wikipedia quite properly descibes theories, and makes no claim about “truth”. Similarly Wikipedia might well be correct to report widespread beliefs that the GCR was built to continental gauge – and in reporting those widespread beliefs it would not matter what (if anything) the phrase “continental gauge” means in this context. Reporting these widespread beliefs should only change if they can be shown to be less widespread than was thought. (And I accept that indicating one of the sources to be a humorous travelogue might help here).

Where the Wikipedia approach falls down, in my view, is in present day things which can be measured or ascertained. If a certain bridge is 4 metres high, but is widely believed to be 4.1 metres, it would be good if there was a mechanism for the objective measurement to trump the widespread belief. But such a mechanism could only be introduced if it could be sold to the Wikipedia community – good luck with that one.

And as for those who do not like the Wikipedia approach on principle, the field is wide open for them to produce an alternative reference source using a different mechanism (appeal to professorial authority, perhaps?).

Malcolm
9 April 2016 at 11:43

Ian J says “Anyone who says that reopening the Great Central would be a viable alternative to HS2 on the grounds that it “was built to European gauge” doesn’t know what they are talking about and can safely be ignored”

That’s a bit harsh. Someone who has been exposed to a plausible story and has not come across (or not accepted) recent challenges to it might nevertheless be otherwise well informed – no-one should be disrespected for a single “unacceptable” opinion.

Of course the idea would not work for a range of other reasons far more cogent than the gauge it might have been built to, but that’s by the way.

DPWH
9 April 2016 at 14:35

Well the Midland had a much smaller loading gauge, so maybe it was a case of comparing it with the neighbour’s and being impressed by the difference. And don’t forget, a few inches can make a lot of difference.

I note that the advantage of having the relatively large gauge is that on the preserved line (well worth a visit) you can stick your head out of a Mk 1 coach and not be unduly concerned about losing it.

Graham H
10 April 2016 at 17:28

@PZT – I’m afraid truth isn’t about majority voting. If there is legitimate doub, then that should be recorded and any discussion shown as just that. If,on the other hand, there are verifiable facts which are verifiable but disregarded by a lazy or credulous majority then that is not only disreputable but dangerous. Does noone remember the Life of Brian (perhaps they prefer stoning instead)?

Malcolm
10 April 2016 at 18:59

@Graham H: PeeZedTee did not say anything which could possibly be understood as claiming that the truth was about majority voting. He made a spirited defence of Wikipedia policy, and pointed out that those who did not like it were welcome to join in and suggest how it might be changed. (To supplement, or probably replace, my rather less practical one that dislikers might initiate their own alternative reference source).

The Wikipedia article which reports the beliefs about GCR main line and continental gauge may well be changed in due course. But if it is not, that will be for the well-described and well-understood reasons touched on by PZT. Wikipedia may be imperfect, (well, it is imperfect), and its best defenders would admit that, but it is not disreputable, and it is disreputable to claim that it is.

Anomnibus
11 April 2016 at 01:11

@Malcolm:

I think one issue here is to note that even Wikipedia doesn’t consider itself an authoritative source. It’s essentially reporting snapshots of the consensus view of a particular topic. This consensus is not guaranteed to be right; it is merely popular.

The upshot of which is that citing a Wikipedia article as a “source” to back up an argument is as useful as citing “some bloke I met down the pub”. It bears repeating: not even Wikipedia itself considers Wikipedia to be an authoritative source.

One of the reasons I like this site is that it hasn’t sunk to the level of so many sites and filled its pages with click-bait and listicles, or shoddy hack journalism. Instead, its articles are usually* based on credible, authoritative sources. This kind of writing is hard to do consistently and well, and I have great respect for those involved.

* (Obviously, interviews are rather difficult to second-source.)

Graham H
11 April 2016 at 10:14

@Anonmnibus – for once, I agree wholeheartedly with you. Both Malcolm (uncharacteristically rude, for once) and PZT miss the point. A primary source is a factual one and the sort of thing that wouldbe cited in court or bya scientific journal, or as the basis for an engineering project; a secondary source is – ultimately – an opinion, ideally based on as many facts as possible, but still an opinion. Also bear in mind that – as in scientific research, orthe construction of a legal case, the basic requirement is that the case should account for all – stress all – the known facts. Anythingthat fails to do that but pretends otherwise (Mr Wiki please note) is disreputable.

When new facts areknown to science (or historians or technologists or lawyers or policemen or …) then what has gone before,however many voted for it at the time, becomes so much wastepaper. By allmeans create a new secondary literature basedon the latest available facts, but to continue to peddle old secondary literature in the face of new facts is, bluntly, wrong. It’s asuseful as continuing to argue for the existence of phlogisten after the discovery of oxygen just because the majority of the phlogisten supporters hadn’t bothered to get out of bed yet.

Malcolm
11 April 2016 at 10:45

I’m sorry, Graham, that you think me rude, presumably for using the word “disreputable” – but that was one that you had first used – admittedly in reference to the behaviour of unknown people. (And I take it as a given that when either of us was using the word, it was referring to particular acts or choices of the people/person in question, rather than to the people themselves).

I have already said that I agree that there is a problem with the Wikipedia approach when it is applied to ascertainable facts. (Those which can be incontrovertibly measured or determined). But many “facts” – generally those sited in the past – can never be known: the past has gone. Of course, whether Edward Watkin chose his gauge with the continent in mind or he didn’t might be a fact to a philosopher, but in practical terms it has now turned into a matter of opinion, because we cannot ask him or anyone who was around at the time. So, as with many historical matters, any reference to “new facts” is really a reference to “changes of opinion”. How an encylopedia reacts to such changes of opinion is for those in charge of it to determine, but if a conservative approach is chosen (waiting until the change of opinion is sufficiently widespread), those who make that choice should not, in my view, be accused of disreputable behaviour.

Greg Tingey
11 April 2016 at 13:38

Malcom
Thank you.
Perhaps we really can ascertain the relevant facts, namely, what was the loading gauge of the GCR & the London extension of the same?
I would suggest asking the NRM, or whoever holds the relevant information.
The Railway Clearing House would almost certainly have had it, as would the LNER at Grouping/formation, for obvious reasons.
Anyone up for doing the necessary research?

Malcolm
11 April 2016 at 14:14

Greg: Thank you for that helpful suggestion.

Unfortunately, such a finding would probably not resolve the dispute, which seems (to me) to have been about why the loading gauge was whatever it was. Unless some suitably contemporary document (containing the reason for the choice of gauge) can be found, that issue may have to stay unresolved, at least here.

(I suppose that if the loading gauge were to turn out to exactly match that applicable to northern France and not to match any other in Britain then the “no it didn’t” camp might be somewhat flummoxed; but if such a match failed [more probable] then the matter would remain in doubt).

Graham H
11 April 2016 at 15:50

@Malcolm – no wish to saw the sawdust. The problem of insufficient facts/data is one well-known to historians (and criminal lawyers) . One is then into the realms of probability and logic – but in both professions, it is the done thing to explain what one is about and the limitations within which one is working. (If you don’t there are such tiresome people as the Counsel for the Defence who will help you there…)

Alan Griffiths
11 April 2016 at 16:02

Graham H 11 April 2016 at 15:50

“The problem of insufficient facts/data is one well-known to”

Archaeologists and fossil scientists

Malcolm
11 April 2016 at 16:16

Graham: yes, let’s not saw the sawdust. (I am beginning to get at least a vague idea what that striking locution might mean). I completely agree with what you say there, so let’s leave the compilers of encyclopedias on one side, acknowledging that they might be bound by some or all of the same rules, or they might not.

Caspar Lucas
11 April 2016 at 17:16

I take it that making the observation that the GC has always had British-style platforms (which might just be a verifiable fact) and so presumably has never been capable of accepting continental gauge rolling stock is not going to close the debate…?

Malcolm
11 April 2016 at 17:56

Caspar Lucas: interesting point. But I don’t think so. It would just mean that Watkin’s idea (if he had it) was a bit half-baked. But we knew that already, I think, from the lack of any clear indication of how trains would get between Marylebone and the unbuilt channel tunnel.

Old Buccaneer
11 April 2016 at 19:28

Malcolm: I thought Watkin’s “vision” (= ‘half baked’ in Malcolm land) was to run via Baker St and the East London line to New Cross and thence to Folkestone? I believe he managed to combine the Chairmanships of the MS & L, Met and SE to that end. According to some crumbs of sawdust I found on the Internet he was a director of nine railway companies by 1881.

So Caspar Lucas’ point is moot given pre existing standard British platforms en route. Good creative thinking though.

timbeau
11 April 2016 at 19:38

@old buccaneer
“I thought Watkin’s “vision” was to run via Baker St and the East London line ”

I’d always assumed the Snow Hill link and Metropolitan Junction, (or even via Herne Hill, as the LCDR and SER were under joint management by the time the MSLR’s London Extension opened) but the ELL is just as plausible

Old Buccaneer
11 April 2016 at 20:08

timbeau: that route makes more sense for passenger traffic;! and I believe Blackfriars displayed a staggering range of destinations on its stonework, some of which survived the recent reconstruction. Perhaps the ELL could have been used for goods; but gauging would remain a constraint in Marc Brunel’s tunnel I guess.

Malcolm
11 April 2016 at 20:11

Hmm. Well since neither Snow Hill tunnel nor the ELL is (AFAIK) built to anything which is likely to be described as continental gauge, if either of these was envisaged then I think I will stick with my belief that choosing continental gauge for the GCR main line (if that is what he did) shows evidence of insufficient time in the oven…

Old Buccaneer
11 April 2016 at 21:00

I understand from John Greaves’ thesis, ‘The last of the railway kings” (Durham, 2001) that Watkin asserted that the Prince Consort’s [presumably railway] carriage had travelled all over Europe without break of gauge.

I feel that in the early days of railways, the emphasis was on a continuous line of rail and that loading gauge issues were secondary. The Berne Convention of 1901 set the scene for ‘mainland European’ standardisation; in the heyday of Sir Alfred’s channel tunnel construction, the 1880s, he sought to get this major project started; further development could come later. I guess this attitude continued in his 20th century projects. Greaves (op cit) suggests we would not have a tunnel without him; and I venture to suggest we would not have HS1 nor the plans for HS2 either.

Watkin retired due to ill health in 1894 (at the age of 74), five years before the London Extension was completed.

The Prince Consort’s carriage could have travelled all over Europe without break of (track) gauge, as long as it didn’t try to venture into Spain or Russia or Ireland (or the Great Western Railway!) which, even by the time he died in 1861, had all standardised on broader track gauges than the Stephenson standard.

Old Buccaneer
11 April 2016 at 23:46

Timbeau I guess the carriage remained in use after Albert’s death. Hence Watkin’s careful choice of words.

Greg Tingey
12 April 2016 at 08:42

timbeau
By 1861 there were very few miles (as a proportion) of the GWR & associated lines which were Broad-Gauge ONLY, & this is what made the heroic conversion in 1892 possible … most lines were already mixed-gauge, or “narrow” (Stephenson-Standard) gauge already.

Anomnibus
12 April 2016 at 14:34

@Caspar Lucas:

Platform height isn’t the obstacle it might appear. My local railway has step-free platforms on most of its metro section in Rome, while the outer stations (which are most of the line) retain their low platforms. The rolling stock has steps that drop out when the doors open, so the high platform stations have a steel strip sticking out over the gap to allow space for those stairs to drop out without hitting anything. This allows even the original, 1930s-built rolling stock to continue in use during summer months for the tourists.

The most common technique used was to spread a fresh layer of concrete over the old platform surface, usually set back slightly to allow for bulkier rolling stock (such as double-deckers) and older carriages with drop-down steps. The result is a bit of a compromise, but the upshot is that there is now more variation in platform heights on the continent than there used to be.

Alan Burkitt-Gray
12 April 2016 at 17:07

@ Old Buccaneer “I believe Blackfriars displayed a staggering range of destinations on its stonework, some of which survived the recent reconstruction”

Still there. It was brought back after the rebuild and is by the escalators on the northern end of the station.

Caspar Lucas
12 April 2016 at 17:25

Anomnibis 14.34: platform /height/ is not the issue. It’s the combination of height and lateral position that makes continental rolling stock incompatible with British platforms. The lower sector of the vehicle (rail level to somewhat above solebar height) is squeezed by British loading gauges. And of course since every platform encroaches into that area, other bits of infrastructure, such as underbridge structures, were historically permitted to occupy the same space. There is level boarding from platforms higher than UK standard at various locations in the USA, Russia and on the shinkansens (not sure about the height at Eurotunnel) but that does not mean that a low-roofed vehicle from any of them would pass untroubled down the GCR!

showing ‘GC’ and ‘UK’ structure gauges and the width between electrification masts proposed.

Caspar Lucas: the Eurotunnel shuttle boarding platforms appear to be below the loco solebar and facilitate level boarding by cars coaches and lorries. Cars travel in double deckers, vans and coaches (as well as Land Rovers, Greg ) in single deckers; both fully enclosed. HGVs in separate lorry shuttles with separate accommodation for drivers. Eurostar trains don’t pass through the shuttle platforms.

timbeau
12 April 2016 at 21:19

Note that “GC” gauge has nothing to do with the London Extension. It is one of a set of standards set by the UIC, the others being GA, GB and GB+ (G for gauge, presumably) GB has no particular relevance to the UK

The UK’s network does not, in general comply even with GA – network rail have their own “W” series of gauges. HS1 is built to GC gauge. To provide a comparison, note that all UIC gauges are large enough to take containers on standard wagons. many UK strauctures have had to be modified to achieve this (W10 gauge)

Old Buccaneer
12 April 2016 at 21:35

Timbeau: acronyms, Jim, but not as we know them. Thanks for the clarification and edification.

Caspar Lucas
12 April 2016 at 22:38

Old Bucc 18.20: the first slide demonstrates the platform edge issue far more eloquently than any of my verbiage – thank you for linking to it. (It is also a crucial point to be borne in mind when discussing of the prospects for double-deck trains in Britain.)

Timbeau 21.19: my money’s on G for “gabarit”, the French term for vehicle gauge as a derivation from other, older meanings (“ecartement” being the distinct word for the distance between two objects including the gauge faces of rails forming a single track).

Old Buccaneer
12 April 2016 at 22:45

Caspar: my pleasure.

Re:’gabarit’: French was the international language of diplomacy at the time. ‘Gauge’ also works of course. See also Graham H, up thread, re FO modus operandi.

Anomnibus
12 April 2016 at 22:57

For what it’s worth, while continental trains won’t fit on most of the UK’s network, the reverse is not true: British-gauge* trains used to make regular runs all the way to Paris as the Night Ferry service. This continued right up until 1980, by which time the rolling stock was too old to continue.

So, whatever his failings, Sir Edward Watkin’s suggestion of running trains from Manchester to Paris via a Channel Tunnel, while certainly ambitious, would certainly have seemed technically plausible. The Victorians had rather more faith in their engineers and, by the time of the Great Central Railway, the notion of building a tunnel under the Channel was seen more as a political problem than an engineering one.

–

* (Built by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, but to the more restricted gauge used through Kent. Older readers may still recall seeing the train sitting at Victoria Station’s Platform 2 of an evening.)

Malcolm
12 April 2016 at 23:13

Anomnibus: there are other examples in different timeframes. E.g. Eurostar to Waterloo. The general principle is, obviously, to provide the train to the structure gauge of the narrowest lowest part of its route.

The modern desire for level boarding on new services (or as level as practical), though wanted for good reasons, complicates this compatibility issue quite seriously.

Caspar Lucas
12 April 2016 at 23:25

Looking at the upper rather than the lower sector, it is interesting to consider the possible relationship between vehicle gauge and structural engineering technology.

The British and smaller (i.e older) continental vehicle profiles are consistent with overhead arch structures – all compressive stresses and suited to materials that do not tolerate tension, e.g. brick and stone.

Come the development of reinforced concrete, permitting flat horizontal beam spans on vertical supports by virtue of its strength in tension, and the newer, larger profiles are also much squarer in form.

Old Buccaneer
13 April 2016 at 03:32

Anomnibus, Malcolm: precisely why vision is needed. Imports and exports are not homogeneous.

Alan Burkitt-Gray
14 April 2016 at 13:26

Anomnibus 22:57 12 April “… Older readers may still recall seeing the train sitting at Victoria Station’s Platform 2 of an evening.”

This older reader even caught it, in early 1980, from platform 2 at Victoria. And finally got to Paris at around 14:00 next day, as the ferry couldn’t dock at Dover so we spent the night in a siding. The return train was on time, though.

Roger Goodacre
25 May 2016 at 10:56

A suggestion, not directly related to this topic but of more general application. It would help greatly if comments were numbered, so that posters could make reference to comment no. XX instead of a name and time. It’d also make it easier to come back to reading the comments, for those who haven’t the stamina or time to read a couple of hundred at one sitting.

Maybe replies to comments could also be considered, to allow comments to be grouped in threads.

Anonymous
21 July 2016 at 13:02

Interesting cost comparisons between the new high-speed line being constructed in Russia and HS2 here in England. I don’t know the full details of the route, but is appears to be another example of how other countries – not juts Russia, but also Spain and France – are able to build their lines more quickly and at a fraction of the cost. For example:

The route quoted here in this article (HS2)is 335 miles and costs £50 billion.

The new Russian high speed line (to Kazan, Tartarstan) is 478 miles, and will cost $21 billion, which comes out at about £15 billion.

None of which apply to the UK (unless you want to travel back to the 19th Century!).

Edgepedia
21 July 2016 at 17:52

@Anonymous at 13:02

The average UK salary (according to google) is £26,500. The average Russian earns (see here) 36570 RUB a month, i.e. £5160 a year at current exchange rates. Might this have a influence?

Timbeau
21 July 2016 at 19:11

@edgepedia

Exchange rates are not a reliable indicator of buying power. How many hours/days/years does the average worker in Russia need to work to buy a litre of milk, or of petrol, or a car, or a house, or to make a hundred mile train jpurney, or to build a hundred mile high speed railway?

Graham H
21 July 2016 at 19:16

@anonymous and anonymously – it’s futile to compare costs between countries as different as the UK and Russia, no just for the reasons stated by Anonymouslyand Edgepaedia, but also because we may count as costs some things which are not counted in Russia, such as project management, and some other things which are trivial in Russia but pricey here (eg land). Even as between the UK and France, my experience of working with SNCF suggests that there are many LGV costs that are buried.

Jonathan Roberts
21 July 2016 at 19:44

@GH, various Anons
Back in the distant but still memory-fresh 1980s, I researched (for Transport 2000) the Völkischer_Beobachter for stories about the emerging Reichsautobahnen. It transpired that 98% of land owners along the line of route of the new motorways had voluntarily offered their land to the national government for free…

Graham H
21 July 2016 at 20:04

@JR – ah yes, that sort of “voluntarily”?

quinlet
21 July 2016 at 21:22

and even if the Russians did not offer their land voluntarily, land costs in Russia are far, far lower than they are in England.

Graham H
21 July 2016 at 21:53

And as for Kazakhstan, I’m still laughing at the discovery that the railway electrification scheme on which I was advising involved supplying power not just to the railway itself but to all the communities along the way; no,I couldn’t explain to the banks who were supposed to be funding the gismo how the costs of the two activities were going to be sorted out – and so…

[Actually, this was a common practice in the Soviet Union;in Estonia we found that whole factories and housing estates were strung off the Eesti Raudtee HT distribution system.]

timbeau
22 July 2016 at 00:43

In the UK, many urban areas got connected to the electric mains as a side-effect of electrification of the municipal tramways.

And, to show how the relative value of things can influence behaviour, I read that at one time people in Kazakhstan never let the gas go out – because gas was free, but matches cost money!

@timbeau – until WW1,in many towns, the trams were the largest consumers of electricity anyway – the domestic load was simply a useful o/p extra at an hour when the tram timetables (and therefore demand) were thinned out.

[Lord Dawlish writes: …and not just in Kazakhstan,; my own rooms in Cambridge had free gas (the meter had stuck) and despite mentioning it to the bursar during an especially liquid dinner, nothing was done about it and the gas stayed on all night in the winter; had to tell the servants to drive away the other students from the doors with horsewhips]’

Greg Tingey
22 July 2016 at 08:22

timbeau
Indeed.
My house was wired up, about 5 minutes after the now-demolished power-station situated between what are now Walthamstow Central & W (Queens Road) opened to supply Walthamstow Tramways, back in 1905 ….
[ Replacing the 1905/6 wiring & re-connecting the original brass light-switches so that they were earthed & safe was an interesting job, too …. ]

Anonymous
27 August 2016 at 00:42

Great article! One slight problem….you used to work for Lord Berkley on an alternative scheme. Hardly impartial now is it?

Nice people get to finally find out about this more than slight conflict of interest.

Graham H
27 August 2016 at 09:17

@Anonymous – many, if not most, contributors to this site have worked as paid professionals in the industry,some as consultants, and most, if not all, give disinterested advice, which they repeat here without any spin from their previous employer. It is grubby to suggest otherwise, cowardly to do so under the cloak of anonymity, and disingenuous not to reveal who is paying you, eh?

100andthirty
27 August 2016 at 11:01

Graham H……… well said!

Mark Townend
27 August 2016 at 15:06

@GH, 130

Seconded or thirded. After initial praise, a needless and perhaps a vindictive comment. As a lowly engineer and consultant over the years I worked on countless schemes, some I’ve personally liked, some I’ve disliked. Either way I always advised dispassionately to the very best of my ability, as GH stated, and as I hope all professionals at least try their very best to do, especially when that means telling employers things they really don’t want to hear. Jonathan is a very respected professional in his field, and an engaging author in the context of this blog. Go away and stop trolling please Anonymous, you’re spoiling the tone.

Malcolm
27 August 2016 at 15:21

The anonymous commenter is quite in order pointing out that Jonathan has worked on a particular scheme – that is public knowledge. It is also valid to state that this work was not mentioned in the article – nor was any other item of Jonathan’s considerable experience. Opinions as to whether this work should have been mentioned are just that – opinions.

However, suggestion of a “conflict of interest” is not acceptable. As any dictionary will show, this could only arise if Jonathan was in a judicial or semi-judicial role here, making some sort of decision. Writing an article for London Reconnections is not such a role. As Graham says, the experience of our authors is actually an important feature of this site.

Anonymous
27 August 2016 at 15:36

Yeah…..

Pedantic of Purley
27 August 2016 at 19:14

Anonymous 00:42

We are well aware of any potential conflict of interest. You don’t need be paid to have a conflict of interest. I think my disapproval of any Haykerloo proposal is well known yet when writing on the subject I do my best to present both sides of the argument – ironically it was Jonathan Roberts who (in quieter times) came up with the report for Lewisham council on the modern proposal for it.

The need to be impartial is one reason why we nearly always leave it to John Bull to do the final edit and decide when to publish.

Basic rule, we do our utmost to write impartially in the main article and, if relevant, any particular interest will be declared or at least referred to. In the comments the author, like everyone else, is free to give their point of view.

Walthamstow Writer
27 August 2016 at 22:12

Can I just say that I endorse Mark T’s remark about “spoiling the tone”. After many years of a pleasant and decent blog / forum I feel as if I now have a nasty taste in my mouth after unjustified and unsubstantiated “mud slinging”. As said by others any of us who have worked in a professional role have had all sorts of activities to do, regardless of whether we like or agree with them, and have done them with due rigour, expertise and honesty. I’m disappointed to see such unnecessary remarks.

timbeau
27 August 2016 at 23:21

Can we know whether Anonymous is him/her self a completely impartial observer, or has an interest of his/her own to declare?

Malcolm
28 August 2016 at 08:31

timbeau: we can ask. But just in case these comments were made by someone whose main interest is in disrupting the discussion (and I am not saying that that is the case, just that it could be), I suggest that it might be best for the rest of us to make no further comments on the matter. Constructive input is welcome from anyone, cynical and negative comments are not.

Southern Heights (Light Railway)
28 August 2016 at 12:02

Getting back to Anonymously’s comments about Russian HS Rail, I think he’s left out one other reason: Nationalism…

But that’s enough of politics…

I value the reasoned comments I see here regarding transport, as a non professional but someone who is interested in transport, I find them very enlightening and find the grown up discussion very useful, even though my “public transport responsibilities” are limited to working out the timetables for my model railway! I keep having difficulties in finding paths for the slow moving steam excursions on the single track mainline… But as that is located along the Inn valley it’s well out of scope!

Anonymously
29 August 2016 at 00:25

@SH….If nationalism is a major factor, then given recent political events in this country, HS2 should be on a roll! ?

Anomnibus
30 August 2016 at 16:45

This may seem a bit tangential, but it might be worth having an “Author Bio” box-out for articles. (You could have a separate “Author Info” page if this is easier.)

Even when authors use a pseudonym, there’s no reason why you couldn’t provide at least a hint as to their background and expertise, so we can understand where they’re coming from. Links to contributors’ own websites could also be included where desirable.

@ngh
Unless I am being blind or stupid, there is no obvious link to that page from within the website. Perhaps it could be made more visible?

ngh
30 August 2016 at 17:38

Re Anon E. Mouse

It is the page “Contact Us” in the grey banner at the bottom links to…

Anon E. Mouse
30 August 2016 at 18:54

@ngh
OK, I suppose that makes sense. My point, however, was about an obvious link. Maybe this is just me, but “Contact Us” is not the first place I would look.

Melvyn
12 October 2016 at 19:48

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling made a speech today about HS2 in which he basically confirmed the project would be going ahead and spoke about how the WCML on which we still rely today was largely in place by around 1850 .

The HS2 London – West Midlands Bill returned to the Commons yesterday to consider amendments made by the Lords and following a debate all amendments were agreed to and the Bill has now gone for Royal Assent meaning work will be able to commence in next few months .

Dave Cardboard
22 February 2017 at 12:34

There’s already a few things happening in and around Euston/Camden (at least.) The following web site often has some interesting info…